


You will arise upon that day and wander down the air, it mattering not how beautiful you were, or how beloved above all else that dies

by Blanquette



Series: The Yew Tree [4]
Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Magic, Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, Alternate Universe - Witchcraft, Angst, Backstory, Domestic, Dreams, Fluff and Angst, Found Family, Loneliness, Love, M/M, Magic, Magical Realism, Mild Blood, Past Character Death, Past Lives, Plague, Reincarnation, Rituals, Shamanism, Some Humor, Witchcraft, Yearning
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-12
Updated: 2020-11-29
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:41:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 47,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26423536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blanquette/pseuds/Blanquette
Summary: No one really knows what to do with the summoned spirit of a long-dead shaman, least of all the long-dead shaman himself, who is starting to really regret having let a bird talk him into it, shapeshifter or not.And, faraway, someone gets plagued by dreams, dreams in which he dies again and again, dreams in which he finds someone he loves.
Relationships: Kim Mingyu/Lee Jihoon | Woozi
Series: The Yew Tree [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1754734
Comments: 33
Kudos: 54





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I thought I would take my sweet time starting on the next installment but I got extremely motivated by the comments you lovely people left on the previous one and here we are I guess. I'm not too sure how often I will be able to update, frankly life's been a bitch lately but I will do my best! 
> 
> /!\ WARNING /!\: as stated in the tags there will be mentions of the 14th century plague, and I am very aware this might not be the best timing for it. There is no overly graphic descriptions and it's mainly mentioned in flashbacks, but please proceed with caution if the current context makes you anxious. I don't want to make anyone unnecessarily uncomfortable and don't hesitate to ask me details about it if you're hesitating to read.

_**(dream)** _

_Someone dies in the dream, someone who might be himself. He clings to warm hands and he knows then that he loves them, that his whole being is attuned to their touch. Yet blood has made them slippery and they fall from his grasp just as he falls into the earth, deep, deeper still and there is nothing to be done, not anymore. Life is seeping out of him yet there was something he wanted to protect, someone with bloody hands and a golden heart but it is too late, too late now, everything lost, everything ashes and dust and fire._

_When he wakes there are tears upon his cheeks, his heart torn asunder for a loss he cannot fathom._ _There is a face, too, one_ _who_ _wakes a_ _yearning_ _ache between his ribs, one he doesn’t know yet_ _it is for them that the burning tears he cannot quell are falling._

**1.**

The slumber he wakes from leaves him empty, something missing in his side he doesn’t know the shape of. The ceiling he stares at is unfamiliar, a creamy, smooth color instead of the dark grain of wood. His gaze falls to the walls, to the glass window there and the rug on the floor. Something uneasy is spilling in him, something of the wrongness that he feels, the wrongness and the kind of fear he hasn’t felt in a long time – something irreversible happened, something that shouldn’t have, something he doesn’t know how to control. When he lifts his hands the answers are written in dark runes upon his skin, runes he knows well yet doesn’t fully recognize; their shape slightly wrong, slightly askew, as if something of their truth had been lost. Yet he can still feel their magic spilling warmth in his being and he knows they are what tethers him here, binds him to this flesh.

He rubs at them but they do not erase, the ink deep under his skin, the magic threaded into him. He lets his arms fall upon the covers, feels the softness of them under his hands and there are ghosts in the sigh that leaves him then, the heaviness in his chest relieved but for a few moments before they return, curling there under his heart; ghosts of times forgotten, ghosts with broken nails, wailing the wails of the hurt and the dying. He turns on his side, body heavy, so heavy, as if the grave was calling him back, pulling him down under the earth where it is dark and silent. But he won’t go, not yet, and he listens to the strange sounds of the house around him, sounds he doesn’t recognize the source of. The smells are different too, somehow; subdued, softer, as if this world had managed to erase all the noise and luster of living things.

When he trusts himself not to flounder he pushes the covers off, rising to his feet on the wooden floor, the robes he wears falling about him. He looks down at the soft clothes and he knows them, knows their feel and the low pulse they retain because they are his, robes he had worn so often they espoused his magic, espoused his soul and the feelings he had carried. He clings to the sleeves where his hands disappear, something familiar to anchor him in this strange world he doesn’t yet know what to think of.

There is a mirror upon the desk and he pads softly to his reflection – white blooms in his hair he recognizes as valerian, dark eyes staring back, unmistakably his. He details the savage curve of his bones under his skin and he knows this is his true face; empty orbits staring darkly back, jaw opened on broken teeth, naked bones polished by the tides of time. Death is there, kept at bay by tricks and the old magic yet still right there under his skin. If he stares long enough it seems rot is rising to his cheeks, the taste of decay tainting his parted lips. He snaps his gaze away from the mirror, looking at the objects on the desk, some he cannot comprehend the use of. There is a censer, the smell of lavender escaping it in slow volutes and he knows now that someone had kept watch over him as he slept, someone he must find, someone to give him answers.

The house is quiet as he leaves the room, the corridor empty yet whispers rise as he tread softly upon the wooden floor, whispers from the shadows spilling out of hidden corners, coiling about him like mist and there’s wonder in their hushed voices, tentative touches upon his skin and they welcome him like an old friend thought forever lost. They shroud his eyes from the light, gather at his naked feet in a warm wave, their murmurs weaving with the rustling of his clothes. It feels less lonely then, less deserted and he’s grateful, pushing open the first door that he finds.

The walls of the room are lined with books, strange books of all shapes and sizes and he’d never seen so many in one place. It is empty of any presence though, and so he pursues down the corridor, until the sound of rustling paper and a soft sigh spill from a half-opened door. There is someone at the desk there, round glasses pushed back up on his forehead as he frowns at the book opened before him. He doesn’t notice that someone entered, not until the rustle of clothing snaps him out of his preoccupations. And then he stares, eyes wide, mouth slightly agape.

“You’re awake,” he says and his voice sounds young, a pleasant lilt to his words betraying a soft accent.

“Who did this?” the trespasser asks in answer, holding up his arms so the sleeves of the hanbok fall back, revealing the runes etched upon his arms. The other stares, eyes following the curves of the ink around a dainty wrist, down a pale arm.

“I did,” he eventually says, swallowing. “I didn’t think they would remain.”

“Their magic is strong. But they are wrong.”

“Wrong?” he asks, head tilted and there are old doubts in his eyes, an old fear there, one never quelled.

“Yes.”

“In what way?”

“I can show you.”

Silence stretches between them, before another sigh leaves the seated man and he rubs at his eyes, grabbing his glasses to perch them back onto his nose.

“What is your name?” he asks softly in that same gentle voice.

“What is yours?”

“Xu Minghao.”

“My name is Lee Jihoon,” he says after a silence and the words feel strange on his tongue, the faint taste of lies dragging on his lips. The man that he was, that Lee Jihoon, he has been gone for so long he is not sure what remains of him, he is not sure there is enough left to make a whole out of the devastation left behind. But Minghao nods as if it made sense, gesturing at a stool near his desk.

“Show me what is wrong, then.”

The paper Minghao gives him is white and smooth, the instrument he uses for writing small and unwieldy. But Jihoon doesn’t ask, copying onto the page the runes of his arms, copying them how they should be, the right curves and the right order of the strokes. Minghao watches in silence, a silence full of unasked questions and his gaze weights upon Jihoon’s hands, upon his face and the skin of his arms yet Jihoon keeps drawing; something he knows, something he does well.

“They are not letters to be copied down,” he says, sparing a glance to Minghao, ignoring the fascination he finds there, “they are intent, pure meaning in their own right – a channel for your will.”

“How do you know them?” Minghao asks, and Jihoon stares at the paper before him. He remembers curling his ink brush around the shape of the first rune, the first one that came to him, the first word of power he managed to make real.

“I made them,” he says, writing the last one at the bottom of the page. He ignores Minghao’s sharp intake of breath, ignores his gaze upon his face and stares at the black strokes on the paper, trying to remember how they’d felt in his mind, how they’d came to him when nothing was left, when the world had grown dark and merciless.

“You made them,” Minghao repeats slowly in that singing voice of his and Jihoon looks up, stares at the dark eyes, wide behind the glasses. The shadows that had trailed his steps are tangling in the man’s hair, curling over his wrists and the curve of his shoulders, protective, adoring.

“Yes,” he says, “or I merely discovered them when they were needed.”

“Why did you need them?” Minghao asks and Jihoon stares at him, voice stuck in his throat.

 _We see death coming into our midst like black smoke_ , the words rise unbidden to his mind, the gangrenous smell of putrefaction riding on their tail. _A_ _plague which cuts off the young, a rootless phantom which has no mercy for fair countenance_.

“Because the world was dying,” he says, “yet if I had known the price to pay I would have let it end.”

Silence finds them again, slithering in the air between them, Jihoon staring at the page before him as Minghao details the lines of his face and Jihoon can feel him wanting to ask more, can feel the sadness that grips him as he stares even though Minghao cannot know what he is grieving for.

“What happened to you?” Minghao asks then, his voice almost a whisper and Jihoon glances at him furtively, worrying at the inside of his cheek. _Don’t you want someone to know_ , the psychopomp had asked, _don’t you want someone to know what happened to you, even if it’s too late?_

 _But I don’t want to tell that story,_ Jihoon thinks then, _I don’t want to remember all that I wished to forget._ And so he pushes the paper towards Minghao, gesturing to the runes there, answering his question by another.

“Who taught you the runes?”

Minghao looks down, thumbing at the page and there’s an old sadness in his eyes, an old shame, an old wound.

“No one,” Minghao says, “there was no one to teach me. There was someone who helped, someone you know. And I found writings, but the runes must have already been lost by then.”

Jihoon looks down at his own drawings, at Minghao’s finger tracing their shape, almost longingly, this knowledge he had sought for so long within reach at last.

“You’re the first one,” Minghao says eventually, raising his gaze to Jihoon, pushing hair out of his eyes. “It all started with you.”

“What started?”

“Everything,” Minghao answers him, “everything that happened to us.”

Jihoon knows what he means, then, he knows; he was there, he was there when the seer stepped into the dream to carve his flesh in offering, he was there when the twisted shades were brought back where they belonged, deep under the earth, he was there for everything, for all the pain and the suffering. His gaze falls down to his hands, down to his arms where Minghao’s runes are etched.

“They are not so bad,” he says, Minghao’s gaze snapping to him. “I can feel their magic, and it is strong enough. Wild and raw, but it serves its purpose.”

“Are you trying to make me feel better?”

“Why would I do that?”

Minghao laughs then, something short-lived but there all the same and his features change with the sound, brighter, younger, and Jihoon wonders what burdens have plagued him for the sadness in his eyes to spill so over his being. But were he to ask he knows what Minghao would want in exchange – his own story, one he isn’t ready to tell. So he keeps quiet, eyes searching Minghao’s face and the latter stares back, something of wonder in his face, wonder at what they have accomplished – bringing him back, back from a wake-less sleep.

“Are you hungry?” Minghao asks suddenly, as if remembering his hosting duties. “Do you want to drink anything?”

A smile makes its way on Jihoon’s lips, something that has Minghao stare uneasily.

“I do not think I need to,” Jihoon says. He lifts his arms, sleeves falling back, exposing the runes. “These are enough.”

“You mean–”

“I mean I am not really alive, no. This flesh has only the pulse magic has given it. I don’t think I could ever leave this house. I don’t think I could ever leave these clothes.”

Minghao falls silent, hesitation in his gaze before he tentatively reaches out, fingers brushing against Jihoon’s hand. Jihoon knows the feel of his flesh, the cold dwelling there, the icy stillness of death he carries in the marrow of his bones. But Minghao doesn’t recoil. His fingers inches higher, to the base of Jihoon’s wrist and he traces the rune there, the only thing of warmth on Jihoon’s body.

“I’m sorry,” Minghao says then, softly, and Jihoon isn’t sure what it is he’s sorry for. He opens his mouth to ask, but there is a sudden noise down the corridor, a lively voice spilling into the room as the door swings open. Jihoon turns, and the young man at the threshold freezes, eyes wide as they fall on him.

“Oh,” he says, “oh damn, he’s awake,” and Jihoon knows him then, knows his voice – he had heard it long ago, pleading, a supplicant offering up everything but there had been nothing to take. Yet Jihoon had relented, Jihoon had given up the little soul that had found its way to the yew tree.

“Chan,” Minghao says then, rising from behind the desk and the kid’s nervous eyes jump to him, “this is, er, this is Lee Jihoon,” and his sentence ends almost like a question.

“Okay, well, erm, nice to meet you? I’m Lee Chan.”

“I know you,” Jihoon says and Chan’s eyes jump to Minghao again, as if looking for reassurance, and Jihoon notices he still hasn’t stepped into the room.

“That’s – that’s great,” he says eventually. “How?”

“You asked something of me, long ago.”

“Oh. Oh, right,” the kid says, as if it just hit him. “Thanks, I guess? Like, thanks a lot.”

Jihoon almost wants to laugh. Such simple words for the tremendous thing Chan had asked for, yet Jihoon knows there is sincerity there. Instead of laughing he watches the kid fidget at the threshold, watches him rack his brain for anything to say in the stretching silence, until Minghao helpfully decides to put him out of his misery.

“Did you have something to tell me?”

“Oh yes,” Chan latches onto him, staring at his face with too much intensity, as if forcefully trying to prevent his gaze from drifting to Jihoon. “Just, well, lunch is ready. I guess we can, I guess we can add a plate,” he finishes lamely, glancing at Jihoon.

“He doesn’t eat,” Minghao starts, Chan’s gaze snapping back to him.

“He doesn’t eat?” he says, almost offended.

“He doesn’t need to.”

“What about eating for pleasure?” Chan asks, turning to Jihoon this time, who stares back at him blankly.

“I would rather not,” he says slowly, watching as Chan’s expression changes to a frown.

“He would rather not,” Chan repeats to no one in particular, Minghao skirting around the desk to join him at the threshold, steering him back towards the corridor, still mumbling.

“Do you still want to join us?” Minghao asks him and Jihoon ponders in silence. _Us,_ he’d said, the psychopomp and the shaman, the blinded seer and the buried one. _Us_. He had seemed so alone, that man at his desk, eager fingers tracing the edges of forgotten runes, full of a longing for bygone knowledge and lost answers. Yet he wasn’t, and wherever he turned Jihoon saw the traces of the people who dwelt there, threaded into Minghao’s own presence; two different handwriting on the same paper, a pile of books left for safekeeping on the corner of the desk near empty teacups.

“No,” he says then, because it is not the place of the dead to mingle with the living. “I will remain here.”

They do not insist, their footsteps disappearing down the corridor after Minghao gently pushes the door closed behind him. Left alone Jihoon rises from his stool and goes to sit in Minghao’s chair, listlessly turning the pages of the book the man had been reading but the words on the white pages do not register; it is something else that he sees, and as he watches the shadows curl around his hands, drawn to him like cold fingers to a fireplace, he remembers.

 _I_ _t had come with the soldiers. Those tall, horse-mounted soldiers that had stood on the crest of the hills. They weren’t anything new. There had always been soldiers, and raids and wars and the death_ _that_ _they sowed._ _But this time, this time something else was riding with them. Something unseen, unknown, something that did not choose side_ _s,_ _something that came down upon the world and devoured it whole._ _It had started slowly, a sickness that struck on the outskirts, a terrible sickness, one that would kill in spurts of blood and the blackening of the limbs. But that’s all it was. Until it wasn’t._ _Until it struck and struck again, shattering the bodies and filling the graves, until the moans of the dying drowned out the voices of the living._ _It spread amongst families, amongst friends and_ _soon no one was left to bring_ _ou_ _t the_ _dead_ _._

 _A g_ _reat pit_ _was_ _dug into the soft earth_ _under a lonely tree_ _where bodies laid uncovered,_ _the smell of rot and blood and suffering._

_And Jihoon stood there, Jihoon stood there and watched the devastation spread, watched the world turn dark and waited amongst the dead for death to come. And it did._

  
  


**2.**

Chan stumbles before him as Minghao steers him to the kitchen where everyone is already seated, four pair of eyes rising to them as they enter. Something must show in their faces, something uneasy as the silence stretches before Jeonghan breaks it, asking in a soft voice if anything’s the matter.

“He woke up,” Minghao says eventually, standing at the threshold with a hand on Chan’s shoulder. “His name’s Lee Jihoon, and he woke up.”

“Oh,” Vernon says, echoing Chan’s earlier reaction. Chan himself ducks from under Minghao’s touch to go sit by his side where a chair has been left empty.

“He’s creepy,” he says, “there’s just something about him that’s creepy. It’s not even what he says but he’ll just look at you and barely blink and it’s like he’s seeing through your skin to what your soul’s made of. And he’s disappointed.”

“You barely stood in the room with him for five minutes,” Minghao remarks as he takes a chair for himself, squeezing between Wonwoo and Joshua.

“Yeah, well, it felt longer,” Chan says, stabbing a chopstick in one of the _mandu_ Vernon deposits on his plate.

“What did he say?” Joshua asks, Minghao turning towards him.

“He said – he said the runes were wrong. He showed me how they should be. He said… he said he made them. Discovered them when they were needed.”

There’s a short silence as each thinks of the implications of Minghao’s words, Joshua staring at the food cooling in his plate until he speaks again.

“Did he say why he needed them?”

 _Because the world was dying,_ Jihoon had said, _yet if I had known the price to pay I would have let it end_. There had been such grief in his cold eyes, such anger in the turn of his jaw.

“Not really,” Minghao says carefully, “something happened, though. Something that must have been terrible. A war maybe, I don’t know.”

Joshua nods, looking back down at his plate.

“You left him in your office?”

“Yeah,” Minghao acquiesces, “he didn’t want to come down. He doesn’t need to eat, apparently.”

“Well, he’s not technically alive, so I am not surprised.”

“That’s what I meant by creepy,” Chan pipes in, talking more to Vernon than anyone else, “you get my drift now? Dude’s some sort of healthy zombie.”

Vernon snorts, his eyes widening as he realizes his mishap and he elbows Chan to get him to quiet.

“Read the room,” he whispers, Chan smacking his hand away. But no one pays any attention to them; Joshua has pushed his chair back to get to his feet.

“I’ll go talk to him.”

“Do you want one of us to come?” Jeonghan asks but Joshua shakes his head, smiling at him before walking through the door. There are things he wants to ask Jihoon. Things he doesn’t want Jeonghan to hear, not now that the quiet dread that had inhabited him ever since Joshua offered himself for Wonwoo’s sake had finally started to recede. And so he climbs the stairs alone, the corridor eerily quiet, the light of day itself seemingly subdued, as if the house held its breath, silenced its noises for the one who had awaken.

Joshua knocks before pushing open the door to Minghao’s office without waiting for an invitation. Jihoon is seated behind the desk, raising his gaze from a book opened on the tabletop. And immediately, Joshua knows what Chan had meant. His eyes, his eyes are hauntingly cold, a faraway look that goes through Joshua as if he was made of mist. There is something else, too, something unseen that raises the fine hair on Joshua’s nape, something that speaks to the most primitive part of himself, telling him to run, that this is unnatural, an abomination he should fear.

Yet Joshua takes a step and Jihoon watches him come into the room, remaining silent when Joshua drags the stool closer, when he sits himself on the other side of the desk. He’s detailing the lines of his face, searching with his eerie gaze and Joshua lets him, waits out his scrutiny, and it is Jihoon who speaks first.

“How does it feel?” he asks, voice cold and quiet, cold and quiet as the grave. “How does it feel to be free once more?”

Joshua blinks, tilting his head, considering what is asked of him.

“Terribly lonely,” he says eventually, voice slow and measured, “the world I knew and loved is gone. The people I knew, those I loved and those I hated, are no more. I am unmoored, and lost, and I do not understand the workings of this new life I have been given.”

“But you have found a family, here, yes? The blinded seer who loves you, and the almost witch, and the lost one you came to me for.”

“I did, and I love them, and so there is hope.”

Something that should be a smile blooms on Jihoon’s face as he sits back in his chair, a slow blink hiding his shadowy gaze.

“There are things you wish to ask me.”

“Many,” Joshua answers, leaning towards the desk. “But I will only ask one, today. What are you? The tree, what is it?”

“That’s two questions,” Jihoon says, snapping his eyes open. “I am me, and the tree is the tree. It grew in a sacred place where we brought out our dead, nourished itself of souls and wishes. The magic it holds is old as the world, and I found it, and I used it. When I was buried there it sunk its roots into my flesh and grew around me, and we became something else, something more than just the sum of our beings. And then you pulled back my soul.”

“But some part of you is still there.”

“Yes, and it always will be. The tree in this world is long gone, yet it remains in the other. It is the same for me. It was the same for you.”

This is where it lays, Joshua thinks, the kinship that he feels with this dead being, with this phantom staring at him from beyond the grave. They were both exhumed, awakened from a transient death that left them deserted, everything lost, everything ashes and sand.

“I should thank you, I think,” Joshua says then, and Jihoon tilts his head, an amused glint in his eyes.

“Everyone seems to think so. But what I did, I did not do for you.”

“Why did you do it, then?”

Jihoon remains silent as he ponders the question, lifting a hand to brush back a strand of hair falling loose from his topknot and the hanbok’s sleeve falls back over his arm. Joshua stares at the runes etched there, the ones Minghao had said were wrong yet they were still powerful enough, still potent enough to tether this dead soul to an imprint of its lost flesh.

“There has been enough suffering,” Jihoon says eventually and his gaze is far away, looking back through bygone centuries. “We have paid enough for an existence we did not ask for. I could stop it, so I did.”

“Compassion, then,” Joshua says, thinking of Minghao and his lost heritage, Jeonghan and his glaring absence of a past, Chan’s bruised skin and Wonwoo’s terror. Jihoon is smiling his strange smile again, gaze falling from Joshua’s face to the books opened on the desk.

“Yes, maybe. Compassion. That is why you brought me here, too, isn’t it?”

And it must be, Joshua thinks, remembering the tortured ghost they had summoned, that broken body, buried alive, alone and suffering. It had spurred them on, more than the answers they wanted, more than the knowledge they could gain.

“It would be very noble of us,” he says, Jihoon leaning forward on his elbows and Joshua wonders if he felt the same in life, if he was this cold, if his eyes held the same phantoms. And Joshua remembers what Vernon had told them then, remembers the other soul, the lost one, the one Jihoon had embraced in death. Someone had loved him, someone had clung to him as they died.

“The other one,” he asks, Jihoon’s gaze snapping back to him and there’s a warning there, one that Joshua ignores, “the other body buried with you, who were they?”

“That is an awful lot of questions for someone who said they would only ask one.”

Joshua knows he won’t get an answer, yet he also knows that Jihoon remembers, remembers perfectly. It’s there behind his eyes, a grief, a distress seeping through his dead flesh. But Joshua knows, too, about the pain of unearthing buried memories and so he lets it go; there will still be time, it is the only thing that Jihoon has, here.

“Alright,” Joshua says, a small smile on his lips. “Are you in need of anything?” he asks, embracing the finality Jihoon has brought to their conversation.

“Books,” Jihoon answers immediately, as if he had been waiting for Joshua to ask. “History books.”

“What are you looking for?”

Jihoon blinks at him, and for a split second Joshua thinks he will refuse to answer once again, yet Jihoon does, a wistful lilt straining his words.

“I need to know how it ended,” he says, “I need to know what happened.”

Joshua nods slowly; he knows nothing more will come forth and so he raises from his seat, Jihoon falling into step behind him. He’s quiet, too quiet, the rustling of his hanbok the only sound to be heard from him – no breath, no noise from his naked feet and Joshua shivers as if a ghost trailed his steps.

They stop in front of the library, Joshua pushing the door open and letting Jihoon go in first. They have brought the room back to its original state, yet it will always feel different. The light is colder, now, the shadows darker, louder in their whispers. Something had clung here, something they will never erase. Maybe Jihoon feels it as he steps carefully, eyes trailing over the rows of books clothing the walls.

“You might find what you’re looking for. There’s no real order, though, so good luck.”

“Thank you,” Jihoon says, and Joshua knows when he’s been dismissed. He leaves the room, closing the door, and he presses his ear against the wood but there is nothing to be heard; the room might as well be empty.

Left alone Jihoon trails a finger over the spines of the books, and as he moves the shadows move with him, swirling in his footsteps, trading whispers amongst themselves. Jihoon extends a hand towards the floor and they rise in volutes, twining around his fingers like infant snakes, their coldness nothing to the one nesting within him. He is used to their constant company, to their chatter like wind in the trees and he is glad that they have come. _I am unmoored,_ the buried one had said, _unmoored and lost and I do not understand the workings of this new life_ and Jihoon knows what he had meant, he feels it in his borrowed flesh; it’s in the foreign sensations under his fingertips, the foreign sounds, the foreign smells that do not speak to him.

And so he touches the spine of these strange books, he leafs through their pages and the words are hard to read, too different from what they had been yet their primal form is still there, just like it is in the runes covering his body. He finds an old volume, heavily bound in leather, one that looks promising; the painting on the cover shows what he knows, what he remembers. A skeleton riding a white horse harnessed to a cart full of naked skulls, a mangy dog gnawing at a fallen body, pyres in the distance raising black smoke to the sky while an army of desiccated corpses marches against mankind.

He had tried, Jihoon had tried when the sickness had come, when the buboes had appeared on the bodies of those he knew, when their skin had blackened, when blood had spurt forth from their mouths. But there had been nothing he could do. He had stood there, kneeling near their agonizing forms, holding them as they’d died, writhing and sobbing. _Every day we bring out our friends for burial,_ the book says, _and every day the city becomes emptier as the number of grave increases._ And soon there was no more space for graves, and they had dug a pit under the old bent tree, as deep as they could in the dry earth, and the death carts had brought the fallen there, to be piled onto one another when there was no more time to burn them.

 _Breath spreads the infection among those speaking together,_ the page continues, _and it seems as if the victims were struck all at once by the affliction and were shattered by it._ _After three days_ _they died, and with them died not only everyone who talked with them but also anyone who had acquired or touched or laid hands on their belongings._

Except me, Jihoon thinks, except me, I had to stay, I had to witness as all around me crumbled to ashes, as it seemed the end of the world had come. And when I asked why, there was no answer.

There had been no reason for the pestilence, none that he could find yet he had tried everything that he knew and everything that he didn’t, listening to the whispers of dead souls and the wind in the old tree, carving runes that had come in empty dreams, chanting songs in unknown words. But nothing had slowed the advance of the great mortality. And then, then he wasn’t the only one looking for answers anymore, he wasn’t the only one looking for a source, looking to assign blame because then the madness would make sense.

Jihoon closes his eyes, snapping the book shut before it awakens the memories buried deep under his heart, the ones he wishes would rot into nothingness. But they are always there, intact and unchanged; he can feel the weight they carry, their slow pulse where nothing should beat. He opens his eyes, and the light has changed slightly, dimmed, softened, as if it wished to spare him. He looks down at the book in his lap and there are words, printed alone on the white page. Jihoon read slowly, the whispers of the shadows closing in around him.

_Now, there is a dismal solitude._

_**(dream)** _

_The dream is sharper, this time. He hears better, sees better, colors and shapes_ _coming_ _into his vision. Someone is crying. Exhausted sobs,_ _carrying a sorrow the depths of which he cannot fathom but_ _it_ _sink_ _s_ _beneath his ribs, smother_ _ing_ _his heart._

 _“It will be fine,” he hears himself say, “I will be okay,” and his voice sounds raw, raw and broken. The sobs_ _forcefully halt_ _, and there is a silence before a face bends over him, eyes bloodshot, cheeks streaked with tears yet it is still beautiful, and he knows then that this is a face he loves,_ _one he knows by heart, every line and every edge._

_“You must go,” he says in his broken voice, “you must leave me and go. I will be fine.”_

_There is nothing but silence, and hands coming to rest upon his chest, warm, beloved hands he held so many times. He gains conscience of his body then, every ache and every bruise and there is only pain, there is only pain to be felt. And so he knows, he knows that he is dying, that the cold sweat drenching him is one that comes with agony._

_“You must go,” he repeats, urgency seeping into his voice with a sense of danger, of impending doom and he remembers the blood on his hands, he remembers falling into soft earth, he remembers the cries and the loss and he’s too late, too late, this is something that has already happened._

_“I won’t leave you,” a voice rises, a voice he adores, “I won’t leave you here to die alone.”_

_But then you will die too, he thinks, blood and earth and cries, but this isn’t what he says._

_“Help me dress. Please,” and he hears a rustle and_ _he feels_ _the touch of_ _rough_ _cloth_ _setting_ _his skin on fire. He sees the sword_ _leaned_ _against the wall but he does not ask for it;_ _h_ _e knows that he won’t be able to lift it. He knows that this is all in vain._ _He knows that this is the end, but at least they won’t go alone to face eternity._

_When he wakes the sadness is still there, lodged like a stone in his chest. The face is still there, too, and he grabs the sketchbook by his bedside, picks up the pencil lodged in its spine. It’s almost too easy to draw, he thinks then, shapes bursting forth from under the tip of his pen; the sharp lines of almond eyes, the ridges of high cheekbones, the slight curve of smiling lips. It’s him, then, the man in the dream, staring at him from the white page and the deepest yearning unfurls in his chest, one he cannot understand, one that brings tears to his eyes and he hugs the sketchbook to himself, trying to breath through the grief pulling him under._

  
  


**3.**

If Jihoon doesn’t need to eat, he doesn’t really need to sleep, either. He knows that he could, that were he to close his eyes sleep would eventually claim him, but he is not sure it is worth the dreams that awaits him there. So when the dark of night replaces the graying light of day, the season slowly plunging into winter, he listens to the sounds of the house dying down – footsteps and voices and a door closing. They have left him alone, for the most part. They do not know how to handle him, not yet, and he doesn’t fault them, remaining in the library with the company of shadows. When the house falls entirely silent he leaves the room, the door hanging open behind him and he walks down the corridor, cold fingers trailing against the old walls.

On the ground floor he stands in the middle of the little shop, darkened and silent, the bric-a-brac on the shelves espousing strange forms; sometimes a face watching from the shadows, sometimes a wolf crouching in wait, sometimes a hand grabbing for him. He stands and he closes his eyes, taking a few steps in a circle, a slow dance in time with his breathing and it becomes easier then, easier to picture what used to stand there, when his flesh was warm, his heart beating. The house was little back then, little and derelict, and the tree stood tall apart from it, branches bending to dry earth not yet dug out to make way for corpses.

If he goes quicker he can hear the sounds; the bustle from the village, the lowing of cattle, the cawing of birds in the branches. Maybe if he had known then, maybe he could have prevented the pestilence from devouring all. But he hadn’t, and all had gone only for him to remain alone, the sole survivor of the decimation, the sole witness of mankind’s suffering. _Was that it?_ he asks then, _was someone needed to know, to remember, to carry within them the memories of others? How they suffered, how they_ _perished_ _?_ There is no answer from the dark, no answer from the shadows who curl around him as his dance slows and he knows who they are, he knows their grief and the yearning they carry; he had watched them die, had held them as they fell.

Jihoon keeps his eyes closed, wandering closer to that locked door within himself, the slow thumping of his naked feet the only sound to be heard. He knows who is standing behind it, knows their voice and their touch, knows how they had looked in death, their body spent, their perfect skin marred with the brand of sickness, their hands reddened with the blood of their own veins. And he had gone willingly, he had gone willingly with them into the grave. _Where are you?_ he asks again, and again there is no answer. _Where did you go? I have been alone for so long. Please find me. Please let me find you._

They find him like this in the morning, the almost witch and the blinded seer. He is still standing, still waiting, still listening. But there is nothing to hear, nothing to see. And so he puts a smile to his lips as they talk to him, nods yes and no, and climbs the stairs back to the shelter of the library, ignoring their whispers in his wake. But there is someone there, seated on the sunken sofa now littered with the books Jihoon has yet to put back. Jihoon smiles his absent smile, closes the door behind him and leans against it, considering the boy on the couch.

“I was wondering when you will come find me,” he says softly, and red rises on the shapeshifter’s cheeks.

“I wasn’t sure… I wasn’t sure what to say.”

“And now you are?”

The shapeshifter shakes his head, glancing down at his hands, sagely folded in his lap.

“Still not. But I brought you back. And so I am here to listen.”

Jihoon blinks, pushing off the door to step closer, the kid watching him approach with wide eyes, something like fear in their depths and Jihoon knows how he must feel to him; cold, distant, dead.

“Listen to what?”

“Don’t you have anything you want to say?” the kid asks, tilting his head, curious. _Someone to know that you were here, someone to know the extent of your suffering, someone to know._ Jihoon considers him in silence, this kid who feels too much like the place he left behind, the shadows, the magic clinging to the very fabric of his being.

“What is your name?”

“Vernon.”

“It is a strange name.”

“It isn’t Korean. There are other countries,” the kid says carefully, as if wary to shock him.

“I know there are other countries,” Jihoon says, maybe a little dryly as the kid bites his lips but Jihoon soon notices that it is to prevent a smile from blooming fully.

“Are you mocking me?”

“No, I’m sorry,” the kid says immediately, cheeks reddening again. “It’s just, you’re not as creepy as Chan says you are.”

Chan, the supplicant, the one who had asked for the impossible and seen it granted. _Compassion_ , Joshua had said, and it must have been it; Jihoon had heard his desperate pleas, felt the depths of his anguish, and had relented.

“Do you love him?” he asks, and the blush spreads down Vernon’s neck.

“Yeah,” the kid answers in a whisper, eyes boring holes in the back of his hands.

“Why?”

“That’s a strange question to ask,” Vernon says, gaze snapping back to Jihoon’s face, “I just do. Did you have a reason, when you fell in love?”

Dark eyes and warm hands and the round-pommeled sword at his side. A loud laugh that had dimmed as the war wore on, as the soldiers massed on the hills had sent wave after wave of their numbers. _War has become an endless course of terror and fatigue,_ someone had said in one of Minghao’s books, _mutated to a sort of boredom that destroys everything but the body’s motor functions._ And Jihoon had watched it happen to him, had seen it dim his features and the light in his eyes. Yet he had loved him, a savage kind of love, a love made dark by the constant fear, by the nearness of death. And then the sickness had struck, and all light had gone from the world.

“I did not,” he says then, “I just did.”

“What happened to him?”

“Isn’t that what you said you’d find out?” Jihoon says with a half smile but the kid doesn’t blush this time; he straightens up, holding Jihoon’s gaze.

“I meant before,” he says quietly, “I meant before he died.”

Jihoon tilts his head, considering Vernon in silence, considering what he can tell, what is still safe.

“He fell ill,” he says eventually and the words sound much too simple, much too quaint to encompass the reality of what this illness had been, encompass the abyss that had opened within him when he had felt the first traces of it under his hands, when the beloved eyes had stared into his own and he had seen that he knew, that death was already there under his skin. And so Jihoon knows then, he knows that words will always fail him, that they will never say anything of the sleepless nights, the quiet tears, the dismal pain. It doesn’t matter, then, it doesn’t matter what he says.

“It’s not what killed him, though,” he continues, not looking at Vernon anymore, eyes out of focus, blurry colors mixing into nothingness.

“I killed him. I wouldn’t go quietly into the grave, and so he went first in my place. He tried to save me, even when he knew there was no hope for either of us.”

“Save you from what?” Vernon asks and his voice is far away, almost unheard over the murmurs of the shadows rising about Jihoon, over the shouts and the cries he can hear in his head.

“Fear and cruelty,” he says slowly, and he remembers their faces, he remembers each one of them, their wide eyes and snarling mouths and the hatred that had burnt within their wrecked bodies.

But they had smelled like fear, they had smelled like fear and despair and he had understood, he had understood; they used to sacrifice chickens and pigs, cows and dogs but this was different, this required more, more blood to be spent for appeasing whatever they had brought down onto their heads. And so they had come for him, they had come to nourish the earth of his blood in hope of breaking the curse, they had come to bury him in the yew tree where he had found the old magic, the one they had begun to fear.

But he hadn’t been willing. Not until they had taken one last thing from him, not until the grave meant for him had swallowed the last of his light. And so he had gone, then. He had let their hands upon his body, he had let them push him down into the earth and he had embraced the body there, the last of its warmth lost against his skin. Only when his lungs burned had he tried to struggle, only then had he clawed at the earth, vainly, broken nails and mouth full of dust, and then, then there had been nothing.

“Do you have any idea,” Vernon is asking, words lost to Jihoon’s ears, “do you have any idea why your soul remained, but his did not?”

Jihoon stares but it isn’t Vernon that he sees; it’s someone else, someone who’s image burns a hole in his chest, yearning and regrets drowning his empty lungs and there is the taste of clay upon his tongue, blood at his fingertips and he stares at the adored eyes, the beloved lips and he misses him so much, he misses him so much he would die a thousand more deaths if it meant bringing him back.

“Jihoon?” a tentative voice calls to him and Vernon rises from the mist, wide questioning eyes and it is enough, it is enough.

“Leave me,” Jihoon says softly, “leave me, please.”

Vernon stares at him but he doesn’t ask, doesn’t say anything as he rises from the couch and skirts around him towards the door. When it closes gently behind him Jihoon sinks to the floor, shadows rising as if to cushion his fall and he lets them cloak him in darkness, their soft murmurs soothing his ears, filling his mind. _And now,_ he thinks back on words lettered upon smooth paper, _now there is a dismal solitude_.

  
  


**4.**

Chan enters their bedroom to find Vernon laying upon their bed like a starfish, staring at the ceiling with a frown on his face, heavy sighs escaping his chest. The sight is peculiar enough, and Chan remains at the threshold, watching silently for a few seconds until Vernon turns his head towards him, a soft smile finding its way to his lips. It’s an invitation, and so Chan skirts the bed to sit upon the mattress. Immediately Vernon curls his body around him, laying his head in his lap. And immediately, Chan’s hands land upon his hair, threading soft fingers in silky locks.

“What is it?” Chan asks as Vernon nudges closer, burying his face in his stomach. Chan still isn’t fully used to this new intimacy, this new freedom he has; the freedom to touch Vernon , without excuses, without stealing his warmth under the cover of night. This knowledge sits like a warm weight in Chan’s chest and it makes him smile, sometimes, in the middle of the day or late at night, it makes him smile a soft smile, one that Vernon often steals with a kiss.

“I talked to Jihoon,” Vernon answers, voice muffled by Chan’s shirt.

“Oh,” Chan says, scratching lightly at Vernon’s nape, who sighs contentedly, “and how did that go?”

“He really knows how to bring you down, doesn’t he?”

Chan laughs, something short-lived that morphs too quickly into a sigh.

“What did he tell you?”

Vernon’s arms come to rest around Chan’s waist as he scoots his head back to look up at him. There is a sadness in his eyes, one that Chan has the urge to kiss away but he remains still, waiting for the words that are sure to follow.

“I asked him about the body in the grave with him. The dude was sick, and then he got killed somehow, and Jihoon thinks it’s his fault. But he was going to die anyway.”

“Oh, happy days,” Chan says, drawing a tired smile from Vernon who rolls away on his back, hands leaving Chan’s waist to rest up on his own stomach, head pillowed on Chan’s thighs .

Chan takes to put ugly braids in Vernon’s hair, his dark hair which are getting too long. He likes the shaggy look it gives him, though, a departure from his usual put-togetherness Chan knows is a conscious effort to go unnoticed. Vernon is starting to let go, bit by bit. Chan likes it. And so he bends to kiss him, gently, softly, because this is something he can do now, and Vernon smiles up at him when they part.

“You know, he’s kinda funny though, in a way.”

“Really?” Chan says dryly, an eyebrow raised skeptically. Jihoon hadn’t particularly struck him as a riot. Jihoon had struck him as the type of guy to stalk the corridors at three am, looking freshly dug out, handing out heart attacks to innocent bystanders just trying to get to the bathroom.

“Yeah, like, kinda?” Vernon continues, “ like sometimes he says something all dry and I don’t really know if he’s joking or not but like… it’s kinda funny.”

“Well, I mean,” Chan starts, willing to give Vernon the benefit of the doubt, “being buried alive with the fresh corpse of your diseased lover would probably put a damper on a guy. Maybe he was funny before.”

“Do you think he could be funny again?”

Chan looks down at Vernon, at the worry in his eyes and he knows what he is really asking.

“Yeah,” he says, “I think so.”

“I sort of said I’d find the guy for him but like, I don’t even know where to start,” Vernon says quietly, eyes downcast, a slight blush on his cheeks.

“Maybe he became a ghost,” Chan says absently, drawing the lines of Vernon’s eyebrows with a gentle finger.

“Should we try oui-ja?”

“Dude,” Chan laughs, trailing fingertips in the dip of Vernon’s collarbones, “we have a whole-ass shaman.”

“I don’t want to bother Wonwoo.”

“I do. I mean, I don’t think he would mind. Like, we’re all in this together.”

Vernon opens his mouth but he doesn’t have time to say anything before Chan slaps his hand over it.

“Don’t,” he warns, “don’t fucking sing that song.”

“I wasn’t gonna,” Vernon mumbles from behind his palm and Chan knows that he is lying.

“You were, and I hate you.”

Vernon licks his palm then, Chan shrieking and scrambling away in disgust. Vernon rises with a laugh, pushing him down against the mattress and Chan struggles halfheartedly, giggling as Vernon straddles his waist to play-fight him, Chan fending off his hands as Vernon half-yells the lyrics of the song without trying for melody. And then, something shifts. It’s in the warmth rising in Chan’s chest at Vernon’s proximity, at the feel of his body against his. It’s in Vernon’s burning gaze as he looks down at Chan’s flushed face, in the slowing of his hands, in the parting of his lips.

Chan closes his eyes as Vernon leans down towards him; his kiss is slow and gentle, nibbling as Chan parts his lips and rests his hands at Vernon’s nape, bringing him closer. _I love you_ , Chan says silently; it’s in the gasps that he lets out, in his fingers clutching at Vernon’s shirt, in the warmth of his mouth and the way his body yields. And Vernon hears, and Vernon knows, and Vernon kisses him again and again, melts against him, hands finding all the right edges.

These are moments Chan loves, moments he knows he will remember. Laying quietly next to Vernon, head pillowed on his chest, listening to his heart beat as Vernon trails lazy fingers over his hair. The smell of him on his own skin, the ghost feeling of his hands on his hips, down his back, circling his waist. The sound of his breath, the warm feeling of it fanning over his damp skin. All that came before, all that will come after. Chan rises his head, just enough to kiss a jutting collarbone and Vernon sighs, hugging him more tightly to himself. Each of their gesture languid, each of their touch unhurried.

“Maybe he got lost,” Chan says eventually, as if they had never interrupted their conversation.

“Who?” Vernon asks, trailing fingers down Chan’s neck, eliciting a shiver.

“The guy in the grave,” Chan explains as he wrestles the cover from under himself. “He died first, right? Maybe he got lost. Maybe he went looking for Jihoon in all the wrong places.”

Chan throws the cover over them both, Vernon snuggling down in the newfound warmth.

“Then we just have to call him back,” Vernon says, and his hand on Chan’s waist tightens its hold, “like when you called me back.”

“Well,” Chan says, his fingers finding Vernon’s own, “it was different, then. Someone was listening.”

Chan still cannot bear to think about it. It is still there, stark in his mind; Vernon’s lifeless body, his blue lips, the cold feel of his hand. And it always will be, no matter how young he had been. A ghost tapping at the window of his mind, one he doesn’t want to let in yet it is always there trailing his steps, whispering in his ear, you almost lost him, you almost lost him, he was dead under your hands. And soon Vernon’s voice rises in his mind, his voice heard from behind a closed door, _the tree said he had asked for the same thing, once, and he’d been denied_. A weight sinks in Chan’s stomach, his hand gripping Vernon’s tighter. _He said he knew what it felt like_.

Jihoon’s dark eyes and the dismal sorrow found there, his quiet voice and the bare words it cloths in darkness. And maybe Chan understands a little better, maybe he can find some of his loneliness in Jihoon’s own, some of his old pain in Jihoon’s sorrow. And so he curls further against Vernon, feels his warmth and the rise of his chest, listens to the beat of his heart and the rhythm of his breaths. And he knows who he has to thank for the life under his hands, for the elation in his chest at each of Vernon’s glance, each of Vernon’s smile.

“Okay,” he says, and he can feel Vernon’s gaze on him, “I will help. I will ask Wonwoo, and I will help you find the lost soul.”

“Thank you,” Vernon says and there’s a kiss against his cheek. Vernon doesn’t ask about his sudden commitment. He must know, Chan thinks, he must know, and he turns on his side to bury his face against Vernon’s chest, hide his eyes from the grey morning light and it feels like it might rain, heavy clouds drifting in the sky, an earthy smell carried in the air with a feeling of expectation.

Yet the first drops do not fall until morning has turned into twilight, and Chan finds himself seated at the kitchen table, watching Wonwoo cut up mushrooms for dinner. Rain falls heavily, drops knocking against the window as if asking to be let in and Wonwoo looks up, knife held in his hand. There’s a chill in the air, a shiver going through them both and Chan hunches up on himself as Wonwoo resumes his chopping, the rhythmic thump of the knife against the cutting board lulling Chan to a torpor.

“Winter’s coming early this year,” Wonwoo says as he puts the chopped mushrooms into a bowl, moving to grab a suy choi from the grocery bags abandoned on the counter.

“Maybe it’s cause we have the ice king in the house.”

Wonwoo laughs, sitting back down at the table, moving the cabbage onto the cutting board.

“We really didn’t think that one through, huh.”

Chan shrugs, pillowing his head on his arms, listening to the neat sound of Wonwoo’s blade running through crisp leaves.

“It just felt like we had to do something. And then we did. Or, well, you guys did.”

“Are you rejecting all responsibility?” Wonwoo deadpans, eyebrows raised over an amused glance.

“I am. I am powerless in this house. Nothing that happens will ever be my fault.”

“Damn, you got it easy.”

Chan smiles, extending a hand to grab at a leaf before having it slapped away.

“Hands-off my cabbage,” Wonwoo warns, turning the knife on Chan who raises his hands in surrender.

“It’s Minghao’s cabbage though, he paid for it,” he grumbles, flexing his injured fingers.

“All that is his is mine,” Wonwoo announces, pouring as much solemnity as he can into his voice.

“Says who?”

“Says me.”

“Well that’s grand,” Chan says, pushing off the table to sit up straighter. “What are you making anyway?”

“Some sort of stir-fry,” Wonwoo says, back to chopping.

“That inspires confidence,” Chan sighs, looking forlornly at the bowl full of mushrooms.

“You’re welcome to go eat anywhere else if you don’t like it.”

“Nah, I’m good with approximate stir-fries.”

Wonwoo glares at him over Minghao’s cabbage, suspending his gesture for a split-second.

“Why are you even here? Don’t you have anyone else to bother?”

“Aw I’m hurt,” Chan says, clasping his hands over his heart, “I thought we were having a bonding moment.”

“We were until you insulted my cooking.”

“You insulted it yourself.”

Wonwoo opens his mouth on an indignant gurgle when lightning illuminates the room, both jumping at the loud crash of thunder that follows. The sky has turned entirely dark outside, rain falling in heavy streaks, and as they watch in silence lightning again flashes, the rumble of thunder following close. They glance at each other with wide eyes, Wonwoo heaving a sigh before he shakes his head, going back to chopping, the sound of his blade almost drowned out by the hammering of the rain against the window.

“Spirits will be restless tonight,” he says quietly, sliding the cabbage into the bowl.

“Jihoon too?”

“Jihoon always is.”

Wonwoo leaves the blade upon the table, stretching his arms over his head before looking through the window again; yet the rain obscures all, and the world seems to close in on them, nothing beyond the house, beyond the lighted kitchen. Chan feel s it too as he bends towards Wonwoo, speaking in a hushed voice under the rolls of thunder.

“Shamans can speak to the dead, right?”

Wonwoo considers him, head slightly tilted, before he answers.

“You saw what I can do. I do not speak to them. They speak through me.”

“How do you find the right soul?”

“The dead are eager to speak. You do not have to find them. They come to you, and you do not have to call long.”

“I– ” Chan interrupts himself, suddenly intimidated. There are many Wonwoo, it seems, and the one sitting there in front of him is not the one he was bantering with anymore. It’s the one he’d seen clad in the cloths of the dead, the one that had danced a slow dance, the waves of his opened fan calling back a lost soul; it’s the one who had trapped Jihoon with the sound of bells and a low song. _The dead are eager to speak_ , and Chan remembers cold fingers of ashes and dust pulling at him, murmurs in his ears turning to wails, the smell of decay and the taste of rot, _they come to you, and you do not have to call long_ and Minghao’s pendant had burnt itself into his flesh; where he to look he would see the curved scar the rune had left, where he to touch it would feel warm, warm with Minghao’s magic.

“Could you try to call the one in the grave?” Chan asks eventually, voice barely above a whisper and Wonwoo smiles, a sad smile that doesn’t reach his eyes.

“I did not wait for you to ask me before trying. But there is nothing to call. There is no one to find.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that soul is gone. Gone for good.”

“Gone where?”

“I don’t know,” Wonwoo says, and the helplessness in his face drives a thorn in Chan’s side. They fall silent, listening to the thunder rumbling outside, lightning painting their faces in ghastly shadows, and the rain at the window sounds too much like rapping fingers.

“What if he made a wish,” Chan says then, gaze lost on the encroaching dark. “We all made wishes, and they were all granted.”

“What kind of wish?” Wonwoo asks, and his voice seems to come from far away, from somewhere beyond the storm and the night.

Chan remains silent, thinking of this unknown man in the opened grave, staring at his lover as himself laid dying.

“He would have wanted to live,” he says then, a soft sorrow rising with his words. “He would have wanted them both to live.”

  
  


_**(dream)** _

_The storm_ _raging_ _outside seeps into the dream, thunder and rain crashing against the roof of the house. But they are laughing, pressed against each other, and the man’s hair have come loose from the topknot he wears, falling in dark_ _strand_ _s upon his_ _naked_ _shoulders. He kisses him, he kisses him again and again and maybe the thunder is only raging in his chest; it bursts against his ribs in warm wave_ _s_ _and he can barely contain it, this craving, this hunger_ _for the body under his hand_ _s_ _, warm and pliant and his, only his for th_ _e span of these_ _moment_ _s stolen from_ _the heart of_ _the night._

 _It won’t last, he knows_ _now_ _. What will come is only darkness and pain and he wishes his dreams had never showed him._ _But they are laughing, they are laughing and maybe this can be enough, maybe this is worth the evil that will devour them,_ _the evil that is already there, nesting within his body,_ _sowing pain_ _under his skin._

I love you _,_ _he hears himself say and there’s a sharp intake of breath, a warm embrace and this is the last night, he remembers then, the last night of happiness._

 _There’s the crack of thunder, cold rain pelting his face and he’s standing now, standing at the edge of a pit,_ _clinging to adored hands made slick with blood, his own blood, the one flowing from the wound in his chest and it hadn’t been meant for him, and the man holding the pitchfork had been young, so young, so young and full of terror._ _He’s slipping, falling backward, shouts and wails and a panicked yell but it doesn’t concern him anymore, he is dying, he is dead, everything lost, everything ashes and dust and fire._

 _H_ _e_ _w_ _ishes it were different. He wishes the sickness had never come, he wishes the world didn’t have to end. He wishes to live, he wishes to live and hold these hands again, feel their warmth and the love that they hold. And then, then there is only darkness, and a dismal solitude._

  
  


  
  


  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wonwoo going “We really didn’t think that one through, huh" is 100% me with this fic, you're welcome.
> 
> The quotes are by:  
> Jeuan Gethin (we see death coming...)  
> Friar Michele da Piazza (breath spreads the infection...)  
> Thomas Vincent (now there is a dismal solitude)  
> George Deaux (war has become an endless course of terror...)  
> and I found them all in various writings about the black death because I have healthy hobbies. 
> 
> Anyway thank you so much for reading!!! You can find me on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/BlanquetteAO3) as per use.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I sort of accidentally finished that chapter and here it is!  
> Big up to Edna St Vincent Millay who's poems "Interim" and "Hangman's Oak" I quoted, love you queen.  
> Anyway this chapter is particularly emo, but I hope you'll enjoy it! There's some progress in the story and also a new character.
> 
> AO3 is still messing with my spacing so sorry about that too.

**1.**

_There are chains of darkness holding his limbs down into the grave._

_There is soft earth under his head, there are thorns in his side, there is a hollow within him. His spirit beats against his lips like a wounded bird_ _yet there is nowhere to fly;_ _the sky has closed upon him – he lays where no weight can follow._ _He knows this was always going to happen, that there is no escape, that he would go down into blackness and silence_ _upon that day,_ _following_ _e_ _ach and e_ _very_ _soul_ _._ _And he would have gone willingly, once, he would have closed his eyes and forced his grief back into his chest. Yet there are skeletal fingers reaching for his dead flesh,_ _naked_ _bones_ _near his_ _own wretched body_ _and he used to know the hard feel of them, there under revered skin, he used to know their polished contours,_ _their savage curves._

 _If_ _this must be the end let it not last, he thinks, let me go down into ashes_ _and dust_ _, let my soul wither into nothingness._ _He speaks to that something numinous he can feel_ _t_ _here,_ _t_ _here_ _in the blackness and silence, something that listens, something that understands_ _yet has no end to give_ _._ _And it_ _sinks roots into his flesh, changes his bones into bark._ _It grows, feeding off whispers and shadows, it grows and it changes and it forgets, it forgets the bones and the blood, the chains and the thorns._ _Yet something remains, a weight were the_ _re_ _should not be, a buried grief, a wounded bird against his lips._

  
  


Jihoon’s eyes snap open, the book he held tumbling to the ground. He forgot himself, he forgot himself and sleep pulled him under, brought him back to his sepulcher as if it had been waiting for him to slip. The runes on his arms, on his chest itch faintly, their warmth expanding throughout his body like an embrace. The almost witch’s magic, slightly wrong, slightly askew, yet he had wished so hard for him to stay, it had been enough. Jihoon waits for the feelings rising within him to settle, to crawl back under his heart where lays the grave he dug for them.

He bends to retrieve the book, smoothing down the pages that had creased in its fall. _We were so wholly one I had not thought that we could die apart,_ the words on the page state in black ink and Jihoon knows now why he lost his grip, why he was called back to the tomb he should n ever have left. _I cannot even turn my face this way or that and say, “my face is turned to you”; I know not where you are, I do not know if heaven hold you or if earth transmute, body and soul, you into earth again_.

Jihoon stares and the words rend a path within him, tear at the tattered remains of his soul. He folds upon himself, caging the book against his chest as if it would hug him back. _I did not know, then, that it was the last,_ but Jihoon had known, Jihoon and known and had watched it happened, _part of your heart aches in my breast; part of my heart lies chilled in the damp earth with you_ – and a wounded cry tears out of Jihoon’s throat, feelings fleeing their shallow grave.

It should not hurt this much, he thinks. Not still. Not again, not after centuries lost under the earth. _Some losses are never soothed_ , he had told the little bird, the shapeshifter with the bright eyes, _some losses are never forgiven_ and he finds rage under his grief, a rage that had ages to burn itself out yet still flared when nothing was left, burning over the same scorched earth, over and over. It had been so cruel, so unfair; there had been no reason, no warrant, no justification for the ravaging pestilence, for the thousand upon thousand of lives lost, for the years of meaningless suffering. No reason for his own end, no reason for the unfathomable loss he had suffered, for his dismal sorrow, his loneliness.

Jihoon waits for the fire to settle, bent there over the little book he detaches from his chest, looking for the end of the poem. _Ah,_ it says, _I am worn out– I am wearied out– It is too much–I am but flesh and blood, and I must sleep._ There is no blood in Jihoon’s veins. The flesh clothing his bones is cold, dead, empty. There is no sleep, no slumber deep enough for him to find shelter, for him to rest. He must carry within him the loss of a thousand lives, of a thousand days, he must carry within him the destruction of his world and the dismal loss of an adored face, a beloved soul. And he is worn out, he is wearied out – it is too much, yet there is nothing to heal this pain. Nothing to relieve this sorrow. There is nothing, there is nothing.

Slowly, as if rising from slumber Jihoon rises from the couch, leaving the book where he sat. Night has fallen, dimming the lights of this strange world, quieting its troubling sounds. He steps lightly out of the library, listening but there is nothing to hear – the house has fallen asleep, too, a peaceful sleep, one that he could envy. He walks the corridor, clothes rustling, shadows rising in his wake as his cold fingers draw invisible lines upon the walls. He wants to find this place again, there on the ground floor, the one where he can still hear, still feel what it was like, step in the exact places where he stepped, lay in the exact places where he laid.

But there is light, when he reaches the end of the staircase. There is light coming from the little shop and when he steps behind the red curtains someone is bent over the counter, cards littered in front of them. The blinded seer, Jihoon recognizes, the one named Jeonghan, the one who stepped into the dream and woke him. Jihoon approaches carefully, stepping around the counter to face him and Jeonghan rises tired eyes to him, a smile on his lips that isn’t really one.

“Is there anything you need?” Jeonghan inquires and Jihoon wonders why it is all they ever ask him. There are many things that he needs, none of which they can give him. So he leans against the counter, peers into Jeonghan’s face, and answers with a question of his own.

“Do you regret it?”

Jeonghan’s eyes widen before his gaze falls to the cards spread in front of him. They are speaking, they both know. Yet he cannot hear them. Not anymore.

“It’s not regret,” Jeonghan says eventually, “it’s more like grief. Mourning.”

Jihoon nods, detailing the figures on the cards. A woman seated on a throne, holding a wand, a black cat at her feet. A man laying on the ground, ten swords plunged into his bloody back.

“Why did this have to be the price?” Jeonghan asks quietly, and Jihoon finds in his words the same anger, the same cry of unfairness that had risen in him. Jeonghan wants an explanation, one Jihoon cannot give, one Jihoon doesn’t have.

“Not everything has a reason,” he says then, “maybe there was just nothing else to take.”

Jeonghan remains quiet but Jihoon can see how his jaw stiffens, how his gaze darkens.

“If everything has a price,” Jeonghan starts through his teeth, “what did we lose when we brought you back?”

“Peace, probably,” Jihoon says without thinking and he hadn’t meant for it but Jeonghan lets out a startled laugh, lifting his gaze back to him.

“I understand what the kids meant about you,” he starts, shaking his head slightly as he gathers the cards back into a stack, “you’re funny sometimes, though I don’t think you mean to be.”

Jihoon tilts his head; they are talking about him when he is not there, and somehow he should have known. Yet something unfurls within him, something small and yet fragile, telling him that he is part of this now, whatever it is, that his existence in this strange world has now become larger than himself – he’s in their words, in their thoughts, part of this household which boundaries he cannot cross.

“They think I’m funny?”

“Just sometimes. I think it’s the whole setup of how blunt you are despite how you look.”

“How do I look?”

Jeonghan details him, biting at his lower lip and it’s a smile that blooms, a real smile this time, one that brightens his features and chases the melancholy from his eyes.

“If you stand next to Wonwoo you kinda look like his teenage son who dressed up for chuseok or something.”

Jihoon stares back blankly, trying to figure out if he is supposed to be offended. Jeonghan looks back at him expectantly, halfway to a laugh.

“What is ‘teenage’?” Jihoon ends up asking, and the laugh Jeonghan did his best to keep in bursts out.

“Like, a teenager? You did not have teenagers?”

“I don’t know, maybe?”

“They’re like, young people.”

“Oh, okay. Yes, we had those.”

Jeonghan nods then, quiet finding its way back to them, trailing a veil that obscures Jeonghan’s face and his voice is softer when he speaks again, almost down to a whisper.

“What age are you?” he asks, “like, not the actual years you were sort of there but–”

“What age was I when I died?” Jihoon interrupts and Jeonghan looks back at him uneasily, nodding as he fidgets.

“Why does it matter?”

“It doesn’t,” Jeonghan answers, and there’s a wistfulness in his voice Jihoon wonders the reason of, “it doesn’t really matter, I just wanted to know.”

Jihoon tilts his head, considering Jeonghan in silence. The regularity of his features, the wide eyes and the dark hair, something almost dainty to him yet Jihoon knows he is the strongest of them all. The one who had never wavered, the one who had given everything without pause.

“I was twenty-three,” Jihoon says eventually, “I was twenty-three when I died.”

“That’s so young,” Jeonghan says and Jihoon smiles his tired smile, the one that holds no joy, no light. Death is always sadder in the young – they had so much left to do, and their lives cut short weight heavy upon our minds, the unfairness of it all, the loss of their purity, of all that they could have been.

“You weren’t much older, were you, when you stepped into the dream, brought a knife to your own flesh?”

“It wasn’t the same. It wasn’t real.”

“It was. Just a different kind of real.”

Jeonghan looks down at his hands, curled over the stack of tarot cards, those cards he loved so well and Jihoon realizes then that if he could he would give it back, give him back his sight and the joy it used to bring him. And he wonders, too, about their own wasted youth, about the sum of the grief trapped in this house.

“You love him,” he says then, “Joshua. Despite what he did. Despite what happened to you because of him.”

Jeonghan blinks, looking up, something soft yet wistful in his gaze.

“I did it to myself. It was my choice.”

“And so it is enough. It is enough to have him here, you blind, him unmoored and lost.”

“Some losses you can grieve for,” Jeonghan answers, gaze unfocused, and Jihoon knows he is looking back, looking back at a corpse in a grave. “And some are unforgivable. I allowed what sacrifices I could, to keep what I couldn’t bear to lose.”

Jihoon wonders if Jeonghan knows that he is speaking his own words back to him. If he knows that he is right, that if Jihoon had anything left he would gladly part with it, just for a few days, a few hours back. But there is nothing left of him. Nothing left of him, of the world that he knew, of the one that he loved. And it seems that Jeonghan knows his thoughts; his hand reaches out to touch him, softly, gently. He doesn’t flinch at the feel of Jihoon’s cold flesh, and the warmth of his fingers is greedily swallowed – Jihoon wonders how long it has been since someone has touched him like this, to soothe, to comfort.

“I know that we will never understand what happened to you,” Jeonghan says and Jihoon’s gaze snaps to him, to his earnest face and kind eyes. “I know that there might be no words to tell of it, that no one will be able to share your pain. But it doesn’t mean that we won’t care. It doesn’t mean that we won’t try, that we won’t take on what we can.”

Jeonghan’s words sink like smooth stones in Jihoon’s chest and he understands, then, he understands what Joshua had meant, that foreign hope he had talked about. There is a place, Jeonghan is saying, there is a place where it will be less lonely, less painful, where you can rest if for a little while. If only you would let it, if only you would let us. And Jihoon closes his eyes, feeling the beating of broken wings against his lips, the thorns in his side, the chains upon his wrists. Something is moving in the blackness where he errs, something is whispering in the silence that drowns his ears.

“All of me that can die is already dead,” he says then, his voice quiet, eyes falling from Jeonghan’s face to the fingers cradling his own. “Yet something is still here,” he adds, beating his free hand against his chest, “there is a weight where there shouldn’t be, and when I close my eyes I dream, and I remember all that I wished to forget. You are right, there are no words. But it is spilling. It’s spilling out of me.”

“Let it, then. One day it will be emptied.”

Jihoon raises his head, stares into Jeonghan’s face and he doesn’t know what it is he’s looking for. Something knowing, maybe. Something true, something solid to lean on.

  
  


**2.**

“Why me?” Chan is asking as Wonwoo fits into a bag batons of incense and a set of copper bowls.

“Because you have nothing else to do.”

Chan grumbles unintelligibly, laying on Minghao’s bed, his head upended over the edge of the mattress. Somehow Wonwoo looks taller upside down, imposing frame bent over Minghao’s little desk.

“Since when do you even work?” Chan asks in the most dubious tone he can muster. Wonwoo interrupts his packing, looking over his shoulder just so that Chan can see him roll his eyes.

“What, you think I spend my days leeching off Minghao, eating all his food like the rest of you?”

“Yes.”

“I only do that on weekends,” Wonwoo says as he looks back to his bag, mentally checking off what is needed. It’s a simple enough ritual, one he has performed dozens of times. Prosperity, luck, all that people desire the most.

“Go get the pig’s head, Chan.”

“I’m not getting no pig’s head for no one, thank you very much.”

“I’ll pay you,” Wonwoo tries, “You’ll be like my little assistant.”

Chan rolls onto his belly and grimaces up at Wonwoo, eyebrows raised to his hairline.

“Are you dunking on my height?”

“No, but I will if you keep being annoying.”

This earns Wonwoo a sigh, and Chan closes his eyes, the very picture of wounded innocence.

“You know who is both very little and also a shaman?” he asks then, and Wonwoo rolls his eyes again, turning his back to him. This doesn’t deter Chan one bit and he continues, his voice a little too loud.

“Jihoon is. I bet he wouldn’t mind getting you your pig’s head. I bet it’s right up his alley.”

“He cannot leave the house, Chan.”

“Why are you saying my name like I’m an idiot?”

“Because you are being one right now, Chan.”

Wonwoo smiles to himself as he hears the rustle of sheets behind him, Chan leaving the bed to come stand next to him, a bit too close and Wonwoo steps away, looking down at him with a tired glare.

“What?”

“How much money are we talking about?” Chan asks, and Wonwoo knows then that he has won. He feigns disinterest, gathering the last items into his bag and zipping it up.

“How about fifty thousand?”

“Why not a hundred?”

“What do you need a hundred thousand won for? You guys going on a fancy date?”

“Maybe,” Chan says, and the red rising to his cheeks changes that into a yes.

“I’m not funding your sex life.”

“How dare you!”

“I can do seventy thousand, which will include transportation and whatever they ask for the head.”

Chan pretends to think it over, narrowing his eyes before extending a hand to Wonwoo.

“Alright. Deal.”

“Deal,” Wonwoo repeats, shaking his hand.

  
  


Later, when the subway has swallowed him into the anonymous crowd of commuters, Chan finds himself thinking he should probably feel weirder about the severed head in his backpack, about the feel of it pressing into his back. The blank, dead stare of the pig had made Chan uneasy, and he had felt a little sorry for the animal – it hadn’t known it had been born to be eaten, it hadn’t known its head would end up on a copper platter to hail prosperity.

Chan checks the directions once again, his phone informing him helpfully that he’ll be fifteen minutes late. Wonwoo hadn’t called, though, not yet. When a sit opens Chan sits with his backpack in his lap and watches the people holding onto the straps, watches their bleary gaze or the focused frown they direct at their phone’s screen. He used to be one of them, Chan thinks, before everything changed and some invisible veil had fallen between him and the rest of the world. There was something setting him apart, now, a secret knowledge, one that felt like a treasure. Yet it’s a bit lonely, he thinks, a bit strange, as if some essential connection had been cut off.

He wonders how the others must feel, then, being so fundamentally different. And he understands why they would hang onto each other thus so, why Vernon had been able to talk to them so readily when he had hidden things from him for so long. There was a feeling of belonging there, of kinship, something Chan would never be able to feel no matter how much they had accepted him, no matter the space they had carved for him. He thinks of the rune scar etched in his flesh, thinks of how sorry Minghao had been, thinks of the worry he’d seen in Vernon eyes. What Chan hadn’t been able to tell them is how much he cherished it, now. Its faded curves, the slight bump on his smooth skin. It marked him as one of theirs, as someone they had wished to protect, as someone they loved. Something no one will ever be able to take from him, not matter what may come.

The disembodied voice announcing the stations pierces through his thoughts and Chan jumps out of his seat just as the doors start to close, backpack clutched to his chest. It’s a fancy part of town here, one he rarely goes to, and as he emerges from the underground he looks down at himself, at the faded shirt he’s wearing, his cuffed shoes and tired jeans. Chan never needed the knowledge of magic to feel out of place, and he ducks in a side street to check his map once again. It brings him to a small gallery, tucked away from the main ax up a hill and he stops outside, fidgeting, not daring to enter. He can see people through the glass storefront, well-dressed people, and his feeling of disconnection grows, leaving him skirting the outside of the shop, fishing for his phone in his pocket.

He doesn’t have time to dial Wonwoo when a voice interrupts him.

“Can I help you?”

Chan jumps, but the voice hadn’t been suspicious nor hostile. It had simply asked a question. When he turns there’s a man leaning against the brick wall, watching him with a curious stare. He’s tall, taller than even Wonwoo, and if his face is gentle there’s something uneasy there, a weariness settling in puffy grooves around his eyes. Chan tries out a smile the man doesn’t return, and gestures towards the gallery.

“I’m Jeon Wonwoo’s assistant? He’s supposed to, erm, perform in the gallery there but he doesn’t seem to be inside.”

“Have you actually entered to check?”

“No?”

“Is that a question?”

“No, sorry. No, I haven’t entered.”

“Follow me, then.”

And the man turns, walking back towards the gallery, Chan stumbling in his wake. Everything feels slightly too sharp then; the lights of the gallery, the stare of the people as they enter, the contour of the man’s shoulders. Too sharp, both too real and too foreign, and the pig’s head in Chan’s backpack weight heavier against his back; it is unsettling, to bring in such a cold, empty place the well-known shapes of Wonwoo’s magic. Chan’s gaze darts around the empty walls where nothing hangs yet, falls back to the dark fabric of the man’s suit, his broad back disappearing through a door.

Chan follows him into a small office where Wonwoo stands, adjusting the belt of his hanbok.

“Oh, you made it!” Wonwoo exclaims as he spots him, and a wave of relief rises between Chan’s ribs.

“Sorry I’m a bit late,” he says as he steps closer to Wonwoo, the man oddly colorful in the starkness of the room.

“Ah, you’re actually not. I gave you the wrong time.”

“What? Like, on purpose?”

“Yeah, gotta get you there on time somehow.”

Chan laughs, not even in the mood to argue. The journey here, this empty place and the faded man standing by the door, it had awaken something uneasy, something wistful in him Wonwoo’s presence had placated – the familiarity of him, the sound of his voice and the curve of his smile Chan now realizes he would know with his eyes closed.

“I’m almost ready, Mr. Kim. We can start whenever you want,” Wonwoo addresses the man at the door in his formal voice, dragging Chan’s gaze with it. The man looks like a ghost, Chan thinks, he looks like one of Wonwoo’s spirits.

“Thank you. I will gather the guests,” he says as he leave the room, closing the door behind him.

“Are you alright?” Wonwoo asks Chan then, smoothing down the folds of his robes.

“Yeah,” Chan answers, removing his backpack to set it on the little desk in the corner, the only thing in here that seems to be of use – it’s covered in papers, some important-looking documents, some handwritten scribbles covered in doodles. “It was just weird to come all this way with a dead pig’s head in my bag.”

“Thanks for doing it.”

“You bribed me for it, why are you thanking me?”

“I was raised to be polite,” Wonwoo says as he opens the backpack to peer inside.

“I always feel like they’re looking at me wrong,” Wonwoo says then, still staring at the head. “Will it be stupid if I do a lil prayer for the pig’s soul as well?”

Chan shrugs, sitting down in the desk chair.

“To be honest I kinda hoped you would.”

Wonwoo smiles at him, zipping the backpack closed.

“Could you go put it on the plate I prepared? It’s on the altar against the back wall. Then you’re free to hide in here.”

“Those people are kinda weird, aren’t they?”

It’s Wonwoo’s turn to shrug as he inspects his clothing, tightening the belt on his chest. His hanbok looks exactly like the one Jihoon is condemned to wear, only more modern, the colors more vivid, the fabric softer.

“Kim Mingyu’s fine. That dude just now. He’s the co-owner or something.”

“He looked kinda weird.”

“Yeah, I don’t think he’s getting much sleep,” Wonwoo adds, looking towards the door as if Kim Mingyu would appear there any moments. “He looks like I used to.”

“Like you used to?”

“Long story,” Wonwoo says with a bitter smile that has Chan staring until Wonwoo shoes him towards the door to fulfill his duties.

The lights have been dimmed, the people have gathered around the altar table, leaving a respectable space for Wonwoo. Chan cuts through them with an awkward smile, clutching his backpack. As he kneels in front of the empty plate on the table, Mingyu detaches himself from the crowd to kneel next to him, wordlessly helping him heave the head to its place on the plate. He’s handsome, Chan realizes then, or he would be if his eyes weren’t as clouded, if something anguished hadn’t settled in dark hollows over his features. Wonwoo is right. He looks weary. Chan almost wants to ask.

He doesn’t, though. There’s light fingers on his shoulder and when he turns Wonwoo is there. It’s not the Wonwoo who had stood with him in the little office; this one looks older, knowing eyes and an eerie grace to each of his limbs. It has started, then, the magic rising in him, the spirits leaning over him. Chan stands up, bows to him in a gesture he won’t be able to explain to himself later on, and retires with Mingyu amongst the little crowd. Somehow everyone has felt the shift, a hush falling over the room as Wonwoo lights the batons of incense, bowing to the pig’s head resting in the middle of the offerings held in the copper bowls he had packed that morning.

Chan watches as Wonwoo sways softly to the prayers he recites, to the appeals that he makes, and when he gestures to the crowd Mingyu is the first to come kneel in front of the pig, rolling a ten thousand bill to slip into its mouth. People follow quietly after that, one by one slipping money into the ears, the nose, the mouth of the pig as Wonwoo pursues his blessings. It’s then than Chan retires back to the little office; the dimness of the room, the pressing of the crowd, the smell of incense and Wonwoo’s voice above it all brings to mind another time, another prayer they had made and he can almost feel the cold fingers of the dead creeping along his skin, can feel the growing dark pressing against his chest.

In contrast to the gallery the office is almost too well lit, stark white walls and a big window opening onto the courtyard next door. Chan lets himself fall into the desk chair and closes his eyes, letting the air come back to his lungs unhindered. He was scared, he realizes, and maybe this is what Wonwoo had meant when he had told him to hide there. Maybe he knew, even if Chan hadn’t told anyone, that the ritual had left him with more than a faded scar upon his chest. Screams of dead voices, a guttural chant in the encroaching dark, a burning against his skin and clammy fingers pulling at him, tearing at the fabric of his mind. The taste of decay on his lips, rot rising to the surface of his skin, his blood curling to white terror.

Chan drives the heels of his hands into his eyes, breathing forcefully through his mouth until it feels safe again; when he opens his eyes fireflies dance against the warm light of day pouring through the window and he stares until they disappear. Through the closed door he can still hear Wonwoo’s voice, dimmed and faraway and it’s fine, it is, his heart hasn’t speared itself against his ribs and the sweat on his forehead has dried. Chan swivels in the chair, feeling a bit foolish, a bit ashamed. He should be over this by now, it had not even been that scary, he had said so himself. He is safe, always has been. Yet that evening is always there, rising to the surface of his mind like a bloated corpse that won’t go away.

Chan sighs, thumbing idly at the papers on the desk if just to give himself a countenance, to pull his mind away from the dark place where it wandered. It’s mostly uninteresting rubbish but the doodles make him smile. He wonders if Mingyu drew them himself. There’s an overly detailed snail, a little man riding a giant rabbit, several renditions of the same fluffy dog and a pretty realistic portrait of a guy Chan is sure he saw in the crowd, round face and warm eyes. He looks for others, finds a tortoise wearing a cowboy hat, turns the page over, and gapes. His gaze follows the grey lines of flowing robes, details the way they wrap around a dancing body. There’s a great white fan opened in a small hand, a wrist disappearing into wide sleeves and Chan almost wants to add the runes that are missing because it’s him, he thinks, watching the lovingly detailed face of the man pictured there, it’s him, Jihoon, eyes closed, lips slightly parted, strands of dark hair escaping from his topknot.

Chan puts the page back, shuffles the papers to look for more drawings and there is; Jihoon smiling like Chan has yet to see him do, eyes alight and crinkling. Jihoon sleeping, a sketch of only his hand around the same fan Chan has seen waved by someone else. A rendering of him sitting cross-legged at a table and yet another one of him smiling, a sad smile this time, one Chan knows well, his body angled as if he was looking down at someone else. Chan stares heedlessly, lips parted, his mind full of white noise. Something is wrong, he thinks, staring at the smiling face of Jihoon, something is terribly wrong.

The door opens and Chan jumps, shoving the first page he can grab in his back pocket as Wonwoo trudges into the room, already undoing the knotted belt upon his chest. He spots Chan, glances over his awkward stance and Chan knows he wants to ask but Mingyu follows close behind,uttering thanks. Wonwoo turns to him with a last suspicious glance, answering in his polite voice words Chan cannot hear over the white noise in his ears. They are quick to pack when Mingyu leaves, and Chan can feel Wonwoo’s stare on him, can see the questions in his eyes. But there is much to do, and it’s not until they are sitting side by side on the subway that Wonwoo finally turns to him, eyebrows raised over his dark eyes.

“So wanna tell me why you are acting super weird?”

Chan looks at him, opens his mouth to answer before he thinks better of it and shoves towards him the crumpled piece of paper quickly retrieved from his back pocket. Wonwoo smooths it out against the bag he holds in his lap, staring in silence until the train stops at the next station.

“Where the hell did you get this?” Wonwoo asks, enunciating slowly, eyes still trained on the paper.

“It’s Jihoon, right? I’m not hallucinating?”

“It’s either him or his good twin.”

They both stare down at the paper, Jihoon looking back at them from his pencil grey world.

“He looks so different,” Chan says in a whisper, and it’s true. Nothing had yet happened to the Jihoon in the picture. This one didn’t know about the misery that was coming. He hadn’t spent centuries under a tree, his soul slowly grounded into the empty husk they had trapped within their house.

“He looks alive,” Wonwoo answers, tracing over the lines of Jihoon’s smile with the tip of his finger. “Where did you find it?”

“In the gallery’s office. It’s not the only one, there were more.”

Wonwoo lifts his head, closing his eyes for a long blink, a frown marring his handsome face.

“What do you think it means?” Chan asks him, voice barely heard over the rumble of the train.

“We would have to ask the one who drew it,” Wonwoo answers, looking back down at the paper.

They remain silent for the rest of the ride, eyes drawn to the picture, to the Jihoon that exists there, a memory of him committed to paper. Because it can only be this, his face too real, too lovingly detailed for it to have been drawn from anything else. It’s almost sad, Chan thinks, staring at the curve of the mouth, the light in the eyes. This Jihoon has disappeared, this Jihoon is dead, buried under the earth and Chan knows now that nothing will bring him back, not even if they find who he’s looking for, not even if they manage to alleviate some of his pain. Some wounds never really heal, some wounds leave scars that keep itching. Chan thinks of Joshua’s lost gaze, sometimes, of his quiet spells. He thinks of Vernon, how he holds him too tight in the night, sometimes. He thinks of Minghao locking himself in his office, of Jeonghan staying alone downstairs, well after the shop has closed.

“Wonwoo?”

“Mh?”

“Will we ever be okay?”

Wonwoo gazes at him in silence, his stare drifting where Chan is staring. The window opposite them, reflecting their faded silhouettes, weaving into one another as the train twists. Ghosts, Chan is thinking, ghosts watching from a darker world. Imprints of themselves that will dissolve in the sunlight. He wonders how many of them has he already left behind, of many parts of himself has he lost, eroded under harsh hands, cold eyes, loneliness and fear.

There’s a warm hand covering his, a warm weight leaning into him.

“We already are,” Wonwoo says quietly, and the familiar sound of his voice stirs warmth between Chan’s ribs. “And time will go by, and we will do better. You’re not alone anymore.”

Chan remembers then a book Jeonghan had shown him, a difficult book, one he hadn’t liked that much. But there had been this sentence, this phrase that had struck him. And he understands it, now, sitting there under harsh lights, watching his reflection mingling with Wonwoo’s in a train window, listening to Wonwoo’s warm voice below the train’s rumbles. _There are words and voices that help to heal this pain, that lift off the worst part of your illness._ And where they intersect their faded ghosts seem more solid, and where Wonwoo is leaning into him Chan finds warmth, and for a second it feels like something is coming back, bit by bit, coming back to him.

**3.**

The shaman leaves behind a deep feeling of uneasiness. He had looked at Mingyu with too knowing eyes, each of his words seemingly carrying another, deeper meaning. Mingyu wasn’t entirely sure he actually believed in the powers supposedly invested in him but he couldn’t deny that something had shifted when Jeon Wonwoo had stepped before the altar and bowed to the pig’s head. It had felt like something had entered the room with them, something that listened, something that watched. The very air inside the gallery still feels different, carrying the smell of the incense Jeon Wonwoo had burned and something other yet, something deeper, older, speaking of earth and the spattering of rain. Mingyu stands still in the middle of the gallery, looking over the freshly painted walls, the hooks waiting for the paintings that will be hung tomorrow.

The altar table is still there, emptied of the offerings, the pig’s head packed up and removed. The ceremony had been short yet it had felt like it would go on forever, the shaman’s smooth voice, the long line of people bowing, the smell of incense and the dimness of the lights. The proceedings had felt alien at first, in this bare, ageless space. Yet as Jeon Wonwoo had begun his psalmody, as the smell of incense had risen into the air in smoky volutes, as the shift had occurred it had seemed to Mingyu that he was in an entirely different place altogether, somewhere he knew well, somewhere he had missed, watching something he’d already seen a hundred times without lassitude.

He had known where to put the head. He had known where to put the bowls, the offerings, where to stick the incense and each gesture Jeon Wonwoo had made. And something elated had risen within him; it had felt achingly familiar, it had felt startlingly easy, like coming home after a long journey. Yet this was nothing he had done before. This was nothing he should have missed. And so Mingyu is standing in the middle of his empty gallery, misplaced feelings of yearning unfurling between his ribs, a wistfulness he doesn’t know what to do with wringing his heart. He stares at the empty table as if it would give him answers, as if he could find there a reason for the strange dreams plaguing him, for these feelings that seem to belong to another, someone with a hundred years worth of sorrow, someone standing like a shadow between him and his life.

“Are we moving it back or are we just standing there?” a voice interrupts his thoughts and Mingyu unmistakably knows who it belongs to. He tries to school his features into something even as he turns, Seungkwan’s half amused, half worried gaze telling him that he failed yet Mingyu knows that Seungkwan won’t ask, not yet, not now.

“How long have you been here?” he asks, Seungkwan shrugging his shoulders.

“Long enough that it started to get weird.”

“Great,” Mingyu sighs, moving to grab the low table at one end as Seungkwan follows to grab the other.

They move it back to their half-empty office, where the shaman had prepared with his fidgety assistant, the one who had turned pale during the ceremony and disappeared back behind a closed door. The table would fit neatly between the two armchairs they had ordered if they had received them, but as it is it stands quite awkwardly in the middle of the empty space in front of the desk. Seungkwan sighs, surveying the room with a defeated frown as Mingyu sits down at the desk, moving aside papers to busy his hands.

“Did you touch these?” he asks after a minute of silence, lifting a stack of paper to Seungkwan.

“What?” Seungkwan asks, turning to him. Mingyu shifts the papers again, looking for something he knows should be here.

“The papers there, did you touch them?”

“No? How the heck would you even know if I did? It’s a mess.”

“I just do,” Mingyu says, something frantic spilling into his gestures as he leafs through the haphazard pages upon the desk, looking for a drawing he knows was there a mere hours ago; he had stared at it before the shaman had come, had stared at the smiling face, the two sparkling eyes.

“Who else was in there?”

“You mean besides the shaman? No one,” Seungkwan answers, sitting down gingerly upon the low table, bracing himself back on his hands. “But I rather doubt he’d go around stealing your papers.”

“You don’t know that,” Mingyu answers, hearing the misplaced anger in his voice. He is overreacting, he knows. Yet it feels too much like something precious was taken from him, and he thinks of a stranger’s eyes, a stranger’s hands upon that beloved face.

“Okay, sure,” Seungkwan continues, “dude’s a corporate spy posing as a shaman and he came here to steal our paperwork.”

“It was a drawing,” Mingyu says absently, still shifting through the mess on his desk.

“Oh, my bad. He loves bad doodles then. Did he steal the snail though? I quite liked the snail.”

“He didn’t steal the snail.”

Seungkwan whoops, leaning forward towards Mingyu, face full of fake worry.

“Do you want me to call the police? Have them come dust for prints?”

“Can you stop making fun of me?”

“No,” Seungkwan answers, “not if you don’t tell me what was so important about this drawing.”

 _N_ _othing,_ Mingyu wants to say, _it was just a drawing._ But it was not; he had looked upon that face and he knew it, knew the feel of the smooth skin under his hands better than his own, knew each of its smiles, each of its glares, knew the way it looked in sleep, how the lips parted over quiet breaths, how it blushed, sometimes, how it looked in the sun. And someone had stole it, had stole one of the myriads of drawings he had made trying to restore it, trying to make it real, trying to fill the hole in his side, the deep yearning, the borrowed grief that nestled in his bones.

“It was mine,” Mingyu answers then, “it was not there for the taking.”

“Do you want me to call him and ask about the drawing?” Seungkwan asks and he is serious this time, Mingyu knows, it’s in the turn of his mouth and the dark of his eyes. But Mingyu cannot have him do that. It’s unhinged, he knows, and maybe he did lose it, and maybe it’s just there somewhere, buried under the mess.

“No, it’s okay. Sorry. It doesn’t matter.”

“Seems like it matters to you a hell of a lot.”

“It doesn’t, I overreacted. I’m just tired.”

Seungkwan squints at him from his place on the table, considering him with too piercing eyes. Mingyu drops his gaze and he knows right away that it’s a mistake, that it’s the sign Seungkwan was waiting for to push.

“You know this can’t be an excuse for everything, right? Like if you kill a dude you can’t just go ‘yeah my bad, I was just so tired’.”

“Why you always go for the extremes?”

“Why aren’t you sleeping?”

“I am sleeping,” Mingyu counters, and maybe if it was any other day, any other place he would have stopped right there. But the bare room is pressing down on him, and Seungkwan is staring with too much patience in his dark eyes, and Mingyu’s tired, it’s true, he’s tired of the sadness, tired of the dark, of those foreign feelings that have nowhere to go.

“I am sleeping,” he starts again, “but I dream, and the dreams… The dreams are exhausting.”

“What sort of dreams?”

“They’re just… very vivid. You know, I remember everything in the morning, and it’s like I actually lived them. It’s always about the same thing. The same people.”

Seungkwan remains quiet, his face unnervingly inscrutable and when he speaks again there’s something new in his eyes, something appraising, something Mingyu finds disquieting.

“Have you been to a doctor? They can probably give you something for that.”

“I did not,” Mingyu says. “The thing is, I don’t really want the dreams to stop?”

And that’s true. As much sorrow, as much longing as the dreams brought, the thought of them stopping was harrowing. There is something within him, something buried deep, much deeper than the ground; old bones polished bare, an unbearable sorrow. And he must see, he must know, he must sit side by side in that grave where they lie, that him who isn’t him, that man he loves, that man he misses so. And he must soak in their desperate blood, he must warm their wistful bones, he must remain there, _side by side together in the belly of death, you, and I, and the tree, and the rope._

“Mingyu,” Seungkwan says, voice suddenly much closer; when Mingyu looks up Seungkwan stands right there before him, gently pulling on his wrist so he would stop wringing his hands so hard.

“I’m going to call the shaman.”

“Why?” Mingyu croaks and his voice sounds faraway, “I told you I don’t–”

“Not because of the drawing,” Seungkwan interrupts, “because of the dreams.”

“What?”

“He will tell us what they mean. What they are. Don’t you want to know?”

Mingyu does, and Mingyu does not. Dreams are dreams, he knows, yet those feel different, those feel like home, one he had missed. The idea of bringing them out in the open, of dissecting them under the light of day feels like a desecration. This is something that should remain solely his. Something that shouldn’t be stolen, picked apart by a stranger’s eyes. And he’s scared, too. Scared of what the shaman might say. That there is nothing more to them, that Mingyu’s just lonely, that the man in the dream is nothing more than a figment of his own starved mind. And Mingyu isn’t sure how he could bear it.

For they had sat together under a camphor tree, listening to the wind in the leaves mimic the surf of an ocean they’d never seen. He had touched his face with careful fingers, had run his hands in his hair, had kissed his lips and felt the ebb and flow of his breath against his own skin. He had lost himself in the feel of him, and he knew, he knew he’d been long gone, he knew that day had marked both their ends, yet it didn’t matter, it didn’t matter when every night he could find him again, and the familiar smells in the wind, and the familiar sounds in his ears, and the trees and the grass and the way the sunlight fell over the thatched roofs of the village down the road.

Mingyu sighs, rubbing his palms against his wearied face. He looks back at Seungkwan, the answer still stuck at the back of his mind.

“How do you even know him?” he asks instead, Seungkwan settling back down onto the low table.

“I don’t really,” he shrugs, “but his family’s well-known, if you’re into that kinda thing. His mum is the best there is nearby Busan. His grandmother was famous, too. I figured he’d be good as well. And I think I was right.”

“So you felt it too,” Mingyu says absently, watching as a slow smile creeps on Seungkwan’s lips, something foreign glinting in his eyes.

“Oh, yeah. Definitely. He was the real deal.”

“You know I don’t really believe in all that.”

“Yet you felt something,” Seungkwan says softly, and Mingyu doesn’t deny it. He knows what he’ll say next, then, because what the shaman had brought with him had felt easy, had felt known.

“Alright,” he says. “Call up your shaman.”

  
  


**4.**

_Jihoon finds himself into his famished grave again._

_The soft earth, the thorns, the chains and the hollow. This was always going to happen, and thus death should be nothing; it had always been there, a laughing skull under the skin. Yet there are wings beating against his lips, there is a weight where there should not be. He can feel the skeletal fingers straining towards his face and he turns to the wretched body laying next to his own, knowing its absent breath, its empty eyes._

_Do you recall, he asks to the darkness and the silence,_ _d_ _o you recall when we sat under the camphor tree, when we listened to the wind in the leaves, when you touched my face and kissed my lips._

 _A_ _nd there is no answer, yet something is listening._ _S_ _omething that cares, something that tries and the words spill out of Jihoon’s chest, smooth stones in black waters._

 _The sickness hadn’t lodged in your body yet, he tells the silence, hadn’t blackened your limbs and dimmed the light in your eyes._ _I wished I had known how little time we had left – I would have told you then, I would have told you how much I loved you. I hope that you knew. Somehow I cannot seem to see you so still. Somehow I cannot seem to see how the earth swallowed you, how your bones caved under the years, how there is nothing left of you, nothing but the weight I carry within me._ _If I allow_ _sleep to overcome_ _, sometimes I forget that you are gone. I open my eyes_ _and_ _you are here next to me, yet you disappear_ _with the dust dancing in the daylight and I forget to weep. It seems there will be no end to this grief. It seems I am made of it; it is cold as my flesh, still as my blood. Heavy as the chains upon my wrists, aching as the thorns in my side._

 _Yet there is a bird flapping against my lips,_ _yet_ _there is a weight where there should no_ _t_ _be._


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well it's been a moment! I'm actually much happier with this chapter than the one before so I hope you guys will like it. It's also kinda self-indulgent but oh well.
> 
> ALSO great news, @KeiEri931 on twitter has made drawings based on this fic for Inktober and they're amazing. So here is [Mingyu](https://twitter.com/KeiEri931/status/1311649556678012928?s=20) and [Wonwoo](https://twitter.com/KeiEri931/status/1313801450477301761?s=20), plz check them out, I am extremely delighted about this.

**1.**

Jihoon stares at the crumpled piece of paper in front of him, smoothed out against the wood of the kitchen table. He can feel the weight of the others’ gazes on him, their heavy silence roaring in his ears. They are waiting, waiting for words out of his mouth yet Jihoon has none to give. He is staring at a him who isn’t him, his gaze following the outline of smiling eyes, of parted lips, of dark hair on a clear brow. He tries to remember how it felt, to be this person, tries to find their remains within himself but there is nothing there, only dust, only ashes and the fading echoes of a beating heart grown quiet. He is a ghost, Jihoon realizes, a dull likeness of the man in the picture, a man that feels much realer, Jihoon thinks, staring at the boyish smile, the crescent eyes, much realer that he himself will ever be.

His fingers trace the grey lines of the pencil, the ones detailing the angle of the jaw, the dip of the neck, the shadow of a collarbone where the drawing was never finished. And under his fingertips Jihoon finds the lingering warmth of the hand who traced them, who pushed graphite to paper so as to salvage small bits of a precious thing – the curve of a smile, the glint of an eye. Here there is sorrow to unearth, here there is the wistful grief of loss, the fear of forgetting, the ache of a dismal want. There were more, Chan had said, more of those desperate drawings, of those sketches hoping to salvage an adored memory from the tides of time, hoping to avert a beloved face from fading like a dream in the morning.

“Who drew this?” Jihoon asks after what feels like a millennia, not rising his eyes from the ones staring back at him on the page.

“We’re not entirely sure,” Jihoon hears Chan answer, his voice quiet, almost reluctant to tear the heavy, numinous silence that had befallen them. “We had the gallery gig, you know? And then I found this in their office. So it must be one of the owners.”

“Kim Mingyu,” Wonwoo’s voice rises, “Kim Mingyu or Boo Seungkwan.”

Jihoon quietly repeats the names to himself but there is nothing to these disembodied sounds; they fall flat on the paper, sinking there with no breath.

“Do they mean anything to you?” Wonwoo is asking and when Jihoon looks up at him his eyes are full of a strange hope, something expectant, something that wishes for a simple conclusion.

“Why should it?” Jihoon asks, and the hope wavers in the dark eyes.

“Because one of them drew you. Because one of them must know you.”

“They drew a memory of me,” Jihoon says, thumbing at the corner of the paper, the grain of it smooth under his hand. “A memory that could belong to anyone. That could have been a dream, a passing phantom as I awoke.”

Jihoon wonders whom is he addressing, then. Wonwoo, maybe, and the foolish hope in his eyes. Chan and his clear voice, his boyish face turned to him, expectant. Himself, maybe, and hope is a taste he does not want to feel again. If this was to mean nothing, if this was to be a mirage in the desert where he errs, although he has no heart left to shatter Jihoon does not know how he could bear it. The face that was his own looks up at him from its flat world of dust and paper, and the smile it smiles Jihoon knows it well – it was meant for someone he loved, someone he had and has no more, someone whose warmth was swallowed by the eyeless wind, someone whose shape was lost under the earth.

He raises his head, listening to the rush of rain against the window and he does not know how long he has sat there, staring at his own likeness, he does not know how long the rain has been falling, if the grey light streaming through the window heralds the morning or the night. He knows, though, he knows that the hand who traced those lines can only be _h_ _is_ , and if Jihoon closes his eyes he can picture the fingers holding the charcoal, can see the face bent over the page, the slight frown of the lips, the intent focus of the eyes. Yet he knows, too, that these adored hands rest under the earth; he had laid next to them, had felt their ghastly touch upon his flesh for hundreds of years as he had listened to the echoes of human misery, as he had listened to the shadows of lost souls whisper in the branches their gentle songs of loss and sorrow, the air dry and sweet. He had listened, and he had known that these beloved hands, hard by his in their eternal grave, would stand forever still.

“It is still worth it to ask how they know you,” Wonwoo says in a whisper, “we need to know.”

Jihoon’s gaze drifts to him, settles on Wonwoo’s high brow, on his dark eyes and a joyless smile spreads to his lips. Wonwoo is unyielding, one to go on until his legs are cut off, until his own beating heart is ripped from his chest. There are words on Jihoon’s tongue and he knows they will hurt; they are meant to, meant to cut through the frantic beating of wings against his lips, meant to crush their stubborn wishes to ashes. But a warm hand alights on his cold flesh, but gentle fingers thread between his own. Jihoon looks up into Jeonghan’s eyes and once he had looked for something there; something knowing, something true, something solid to lean on.

And the harsh words wilt in his throat, and the frantic wings settle, and the smile softens.

“I understand,” he says then, “if you wish to, ask them.”

Wonwoo brightens, glancing at Chan who is smiling back at him and Jihoon wonders why this would please them so, wonders why they chose to make his trials their own.

“But don’t tell me,” he adds, a quiet afterthought, “don’t tell me if it is nothing.”

“It won’t be,” Chan’s voice rises and he seems so sure, so sure Jihoon wants to believe him. “I saw them. The other drawings. And, and I saw the guy, too.”

Jihoon watches as Chan throws a gauging look at Wonwoo, and there seems to be no doubt in Chan’s mind as to who drew the portrait. “I saw him, and he’s strange. Something is wrong with him.”

“I didn’t feel anything,” Wonwoo says in a whisper, Minghao next to him clutching his hand.

“Yeah, well, I did,” Chan retorts, a stubborn set to his jaw, arms crossed over his chest. Next to him Vernon leans in his space, a quiet show of support Jihoon watches with interest; he had come to notice the subtle interactions between these people around him, the quiet glances, the soft touches that spoke of their deeper bond. And Jihoon wonders if, just has he had become a part of them, they are becoming a part of him, too, his senses attuned to their voices, their breaths, the beat of their thundering hearts.

“I believe you,” Jihoon tries and watches as the surprise in Chan’s eyes changes to something akin to smugness as he glances back at Wonwoo.

Next to him Vernon stares at Jihoon with a bewildered softness Jihoon does not quite understand, a softness almost familiar that resolves itself in a shy smile as Vernon ducks his head, realizing he’d been caught staring. Something has changed, Jihoon realizes then; they are scared of him no more. In the sleepless nights he had spent walking the darkened corridors, soft shadows trailing his steps, in the days he had spent staring at the drifting clouds in a graying sky when black words on white pages proved too much to bear, something had changed. The house had grown accustomed to the silence of his feet, to the quietness of his absent breaths, to the icy stillness of his flesh. And they had, too, finding hollows for him to fill, carving a place to shelter his restless soul.

It is a sudden, unsettling thought and Jihoon looks at each of them in turn, detailing the lines of their bright faces, listening to their voices curl over words he doesn’t grasp as a softly aching wistfulness unfurls between his ribs. He hadn’t noticed, and Jihoon feels unmoored, expelled from himself; he hadn’t noticed and it had grown insidiously until all was covered in tender ivy – he doesn’t need a foolish hope to give him something to lose, he already has it. The sum of his existence in this world is gathered there under the rafters and Jihoon can feel the beat of their valiant hearts, the warmth of their lively bodies, the sound of their gentle voices. It is a wonder how quickly it happened, this fledgling affection, and Jihoon wonders who sowed it; Minghao and the ancient sorrows he carries, Jeonghan and his earnest words, Joshua and his kindred soul, Vernon, Chan, Wonwoo – himself, maybe, in the deepest recess of the night, when he had wondered if there was still anything left to feel.

“Can we not tell him I stole the drawing, though?” Chan is asking, his voice bringing Jihoon back to himself.

“I think he’ll forget about the drawing when we ask him how does he know a dead guy we sort of brought back to life but not really,” Wonwoo deadpans and there’s a gasp, Chan’s wide eyes falling to Jihoon.

Jihoon could tell him there is nothing left in him to offend but he shrugs instead, trying a wry smile.

“It is true,” he says, “I am dead.”

There’s a snort from Vernon who hides his face behind Chan’s shoulder, trying to mask his outburst with a forced cough.

“Man, it’s weird to hear you say it,” Chan says eventually, and a held breath is released, whispers Jihoon doesn’t listen to coursing through the room. He stays staring at Chan, at the relief on his features, at the soft smile tugging at his lips and he tries to let him in, let him settle in the dim hollow within him, a small spark of warmth, a flicker of tossed light.

“I’ll go there tomorrow,” Wonwoo addresses to no one in particular, raking his hair back, his handsome face turned towards the window where the rain is still tapping, full of ghostly sighs.

There is something is this moment Jihoon does not quite grasp, something expectant, lodged in the hopeful faces of those around him, in their bright eyes, their held breaths and the thudding of their hearts. Jihoon has already lived such moments, contained within the boundaries of a room, the sound of the rain, the waning light of day. Something is shifting, slowly, inexorably, something that was set in motion when he opened his eyes in an unknown room, warm runes on his cold flesh, strange sounds in his ears. And there is a slight feeling of dismay making him shiver, a slight scare; there is no going back now, they had dragged him too close to the edge of this liminal space where he lays captive, this grave he has never truly left, this prison of bones and sorrow.

Jihoon looks back down at the laughing face on the white page, and he listens to the sound of rain, and the hope he had scorned blooms in his throat, a fragile wing against his lips.

  
  


**2.**

Mingyu splashes cold water on his face, raising his gaze to look at his reflection in the mirror, droplets hanging from his eyelashes like tears. He wipes at them with a cold hand, staring at the trail they leave on his skin. It seems as if something unseen had slowly honed the lines of his face until they were sharp enough to cut, separate flesh from the bone, slice your hands if you dared touch. His skin is pale, pulled taught over the curves of his bones and he looks spent, faded, wearied. Mingyu stares, and if he stares long enough it seems rot is rising to his cheeks, the taste of decay tainting his parted lips.

He pulls away from the mirror with a gasp, heart thundering in his chest, hard enough to spear itself on sharp ribs. When he looks down at his hands, at the blue veins under the skin it is the blood that he sees, crimson and wet. His breaths come labored, a dull pain in his belly spreading to his chest; were he to look he knows what he would see, the flesh torn and bloody, lacerations of a fatal wound. Mingyu presses his hands against his stomach, curling on himself as he kneels to the floor. It happened, that the dreams would spill in his waking hours. It was sweet, sometimes. The smell of warm grass, the echo of a beloved laugh, a soft touch upon his wrist. And sometimes, sometimes the grave rose to meet him, spreading a dull ache over his limbs, filling his throat with the taste of blood, painting dark bruises on his tender skin.

There is a knock at the door, Mingyu struggling to get his breathing under control, rising to his feet with a sharp wince of pain.

“You alright in there?” Seungkwan’s voice comes muffled through the door. “The dude is waiting.”

“I’m coming,” Mingyu grits out, forcing his gaze to his reflection once again. He wipes at the thin sheen of sweat that had appeared on his forehead, forces air in his constricted lungs, and if he smiles he almost looks like he used to, if you forget the paleness, if you don’t mind the bruises under his eyes. He straightens the dark sweater he is wearing, slicks his hair back, reaches for the doorknob as he tries to suppress the acid dread churning in his stomach. Seungkwan had had no need to call the shaman. The man had come to find them himself.

“He’s in the office,” Seungkwan tells him when Mingyu emerges from the bathroom. He’s leaning against the wall, arms crossed to his chest and he details Mingyu with too much attention, a knowing glint in his eyes that does nothing to assuage Mingyu’s dread.

“Do you want me there too?”

“I’m a big boy,” Mingyu waves him off, “I’m sure I don’t need back up for whatever he wants.”

“Alright,” Seungkwan shrugs, pushing himself off the wall. “I’m going back to the workers then.”

Mingyu nods, watching as Seungkwan retreats to the gallery. They had started to hang the paintings they will expose for sell, voices and busy noises drifting around the room, lively, maybe too much so as a shiver goes through Mingyu. It feels like there is less and less of a place for him in this world, as if the dreams had grown too heavy, taking over his being, pulling him back to a past he missed, a past he longed for, one that had drawn a veil between him and the rest of the world. Mingyu sighs, forcing one feet before another, slow steps that take him to their empty office where Seungkwan had dragged another chair to accommodate their guest.

Mingyu stares through the door before letting himself known. The shaman is dressed in his everyday clothes, a dark wool sweater, jeans tucked into boots, and he looks younger than he did during the ritual, as if something had fallen off him, something knowing, something old he had borrowed. He is hunched over in his chair, leaning towards the desk and Mingyu has an inkling of what he is doing – straining towards the drawing on the desk, looking for more. Mingyu steps into the office then, clearing his throat to get his attention and the man jumps, turning towards him as he stands, a boyish smile on his face.

“Hello,” he says, “I’m sorry for intruding.”

“Seungkwan says you had something to ask me.”

“I do,” the shaman says, his smile faltering, eyes darting to the desk where Mingyu goes to sit. He should have tidied the papers, Mingyu thinks in passing, he should have hidden the drawings.

“I’m listening, then,” Mingyu says and it’s a strange thing to see the shaman fidget, his tall frame hunched over, his dark, troubling eyes falling to his hands.

“First of all, I’m sorry about this,” he says, pulling out of his jeans pocket a folded piece of paper he puts on the desk, a sheepish smile on his lips. Mingyu pulls it towards himself, staring at the creases on the paper and he doesn’t need to unfold it to know what it is, who he will see staring back at him.

“We had a good reason to take it,” the shaman continues, unsettled by Mingyu’s prolonged silence.

“What was it?” Mingyu asks slowly, rising his gaze to the man who hesitates, changing course at the last moment.

“First, can I ask you something? The man in the drawing, how do you know him?”

Mingyu considers lying. This thing he has kept to himself for so long, this secret he holds tight under his heart even though it spills ink in his lungs, it is his, solely his, something he does not want dragged out in the open for prying eyes. But it seems the shaman already knows. It seems he is waiting for an answer that will tell him he is right; it’s in the light of his eyes, in the upward tilt of his mouth, in the breathless gaze he alights on Mingyu’s features.

“I see him in dreams,” Mingyu says eventually, watching with interest as the shaman’s features twist into something like relief.

“What kind of dreams?” he asks, and Mingyu tilts his head, considering.

“Aren’t you supposed to tell me that?”

The shaman’s smile grows, and he leans forward, eager, knowing.

“What do they feel like?”

“They feel like memories,” Mingyu says without thinking, because it’s true.

“Maybe they are,” the shaman says in a breath and the words weren’t meant for Mingyu it seems, his gaze looking inwards, a frown settling on his features.

“When did it start?” he asks eventually, and once again it feels like he’s only waiting for a confirmation.

“You already know, don’t you?” Mingyu says and the shaman doesn’t contradict him; there is something he knows, something that sparks dread in Mingyu’s chest.

“What is this all about?” he asks, and he can hear the strain in his voice, can feel the desperate glint of his eyes – it cannot go on, Mingyu realizes. There is so much he can bear, and the deep longing the dreams brought, their grief, it had hollowed the marrow of his bones, had filled his lungs with sulfur, had burned his heart to cinders. Something must give, Mingyu knows then, something must give or he will break, hugging an invisible wound, wiping blood from clean hands.

“I need to make a phone call,” the shaman suddenly says, restlessness in his dark eyes. “I must make a phone call and I swear I’ll give you your explanation. But I just – just wait here for a bit.”

And before Mingyu can say anything he finds himself staring at an empty chair, the office’s door falling close behind hurried footsteps. Mingyu glances down at the piece of paper still neatly folded upon his desk and it’s with slow fingers that he opens it, smoothing out the creases on his wooden desk. Crescent eyes and smiling lips and he follows the lines of a sharp jaw with a trembling finger. He knows this feeling of loss, this deep-seated grief. He is in mourning for someone who’s name he never knew, yet he knows the sound of their voice, the taste of their lips. He knows the way the sun shines in their hair, how their fingers curl over his own, how they sound, deep at night, whispered words and gentle gasps.

He knows the sound of their tears, the taste of his own.

Mingyu stares at the drawing, and the hollow within him grows yet another inch, the sound of his heart lost in a dismal silence.

  
  


**3.**

Jihoon finds himself seated on Minghao’s bed, Jeonghan behind him doing things to his hair he’s not sure he quite likes, but the feeling of his gentle fingers is nice enough, and so he lets him. Chan and Vernon are going through Minghao’s dresser for a reason that escapes him, their lively voices not quite enough to wake the man himself, who has dozed off minutes ago, curled up on his side next to Jeonghan and himself. Jihoon does not remember how this happened, exactly. They had been awaiting Wonwoo’s return, seated at the kitchen table, the silence stretching, spilling ink in their anxious minds. Chan had grown restless beside Vernon, his gaze landing on Jihoon with a new weight.

“You need new clothes,” he’d said, “some that will make you look like less of a ghost.”

“He can’t take those off,” Joshua had pointed out in a disinterested tone, gaze fixed on the orange he was busy peeling, slipping quarters to Jeonghan.

“Look, just because he can’t take them off doesn’t mean we can’t layer stuff onto it,” Chan had retorted before turning to Jihoon, face bright and smiling.

“Don’t you want to be a modern boy?”

“A modern boy?” Jihoon had repeated, and a small smile had made its way to his lips, one that had Chan staring, and when Joshua had looked up from his orange he’d been caught too, something soft spilling on his features.

“I can lend him some,” Minghao had said in the resulting silence, speaking through a mouthful of apple. And thus they had found themselves upstairs, Chan shifting through Minghao’s clothes as the other’s reclined lazily against his bed.

“Oh, this is nice,” Chan says eventually, retrieving from the dresser a white sweater, black bands on the edge of the sleeves, the hem and the v-cut of the neck. “It’s all soft. Do you like it?” he asks, holding it out to Jihoon. Jihoon had never considered whether or not he liked anything in this new world. It was all too strange, too foreign. But the fabric looks soft, and Chan is smiling, and so he nods.

“Nice,” Chan says, stepping closer before stopping with an appraising look.

“Can we at least take off the outer robe? Like, it should be fine, right?”

Joshua looks up from where he’d been sitting on the floor, back against the mattress, leafing through one of Minghao’s books.

“If you do and he disappears into smoke I’m not responsible,” he mumbles, going back to the pages before him.

Chan’s gaze falls back to Jihoon, who’s sitting very still on the bed, Jeonghan’s breading the remnant of dried flowers in his hair. He looks a bit predatory, Jihoon thinks suddenly, the grin on his face growing with each passing seconds.

“Take off the outer robe,” Chan says eventually, “I’m sure it will be fine.”

“Cause you have such expertise in magic,” another voice rises as Minghao sits up, stifling a yawn, the side of his hair mussed up from being mushed against the mattress. “Are you stripping my ghost?” he asks in his lilting voice and Jihoon knows he is only joking but the words stir something in him, _my_ , _mine_ , and he wonders if this is what belonging feels like, people massed next to you, joking, a hand in your hair.

“Not a ghost,” Joshua mutters, turning a page.

“I’m not stripping anyone,” Chan is saying, “he can do that himself. If he keeps it on it will look all bulky and weird.”

Minghao’s laughing then, shaking his head, gathering his limbs in a cross-legged stance.

“I think the outer robe should be fine,” he says, more to Jihoon than Chan. “You can take it off.”

And so Jihoon waits for Jeonghan to tie his hair, standing up as Chan stares at him expectantly, the sweater in his hands. It is strange, to untie the knot on his chest, its slight pressure no longer felt. There are worried glances as he lets the outer robe fall off his shoulders, gathering it against his chest in a swarm of folded fabric he lets go off onto the bed. Nothing happens. The inner robe is starkly white against his skin, the dark ink of the runes visible through the fabric resting on his wrists, thinned by use and time. Chan steps closer, wordlessly helping him slip on the sweater, mindful of his flowery braid, of the hanbok’s sleeves he tucks in, pulling on the hem to straighten the fabric.

“Oh,” Chan says as he steps back to gauge him, his voice sounding a little surprised. “It suits you.”

“You look so young,” Minghao says in a breath and there’s something of a sadness in his voice, a wistful sliver Jihoon finds in the other’s gaze as they watch him step to the mirror on Minghao’s desk. He stares at himself there, his reflection almost foreign, the strange fabric soft where it touches his skin, brushing against the shadow of a collarbone.

“I look like you do,” Jihoon says eventually, addressing no one in particular, gaze stuck to his reflection. And it is strange, how so little a thing can change so much. He looks younger, it’s true, and Jihoon knows now what had brought down such melancholy over the others. Without the pathos of the hanbok draped abound his body, without the commanding poise it gives him, he looks just like they all do, it shows him just as he is. Someone a little too young, a little too frail to have undergone all that he had. And Jihoon stares, and it had been so long since he had allowed himself to pity this body, to recognize that all had been much too heavy, much to heavy to bear by himself.

There’s a hand on his shoulder, heavy and warm, and when Jihoon turns Chan is standing there, a little unsure, a little shy.

“Let’s try a leather jacket next time,” he is saying, and if his smile is brittle his eyes are sincere. “I’m sure you’d look hot in it.”

“Hot?” Jihoon asks, the meaning escaping him, and Chan is about to answer when Minghao’s phone rings.

He answers and his eyes fall to Jihoon right away, listening intently at the person on the other end.

“It’s Wonwoo,” he says after a few minutes, extending the cellphone to Jihoon. “He wants to talk to you.”

Jihoon takes it gingerly, pressing the foreign object against his ear. It’s better if you close your eyes, Joshua had told him when they had first explained the concept to him. Then you can pretend the person is right there next to you, and it is less strange.

So Jihoon does, pressing his eyelids closed, the disembodied voice of Wonwoo reaching him from wherever he is.

“Hi,” he says, waiting for Jihoon to answer.

“Hi,” Jihoon says back, trying to picture Wonwoo’s tall frame right there next to him, fingers clutching the phone.

“I met the guy who did the drawings. Kim Mingyu. I think you should meet him, too.”

There is something in Wonwoo’s voice, an urgency he tries to hide under his even tone and it grates on Jihoon’s nerves, unsettling him. He shuts his eyes tighter, trying to picture which expression Wonwoo must be sporting right now, but nothing comes to mind, only blackness and the sounds of the wind and Wonwoo, breathing in his ear. So he opens his eyes, stares at Joshua instead, who’s looking up at him from his place on the floor, book abandoned in his lap.

“Why?” he asks, “why should I meet him?”

Something flickers in Joshua’s gaze and he sits straighter, a question in his gaze Jihoon doesn’t know how to answer.

“He knows you,” Wonwoo’s voice is saying, “he said he had dreams, dreams that felt like memories. And, like, I don’t really wanna say it but Chan was right. The guy himself is… Something’s off about him.”

“So it is not nothing,” Jihoon whispers and he can feel the held breaths, the weight of five pairs of eyes but he only looks at Joshua who’s staring back, gaze steadfast and Jihoon finds comfort in him, in the way he leans forward as if to reach out, in the resolve he finds in his face.

“Yeah,” Wonwoo says, voice quiet. “There is something.”

“Okay,” Jihoon says then, “I will meet him.”

“Okay,” Wonwoo echoes, something breathless in his voice. There is this feeling again, this shiver curled against Jihoon’s spine; he has stepped to the edge, and were he to fall he doesn’t know where or how he’ll land. He barely hears as Wonwoo asks to speak to Minghao again, Jihoon wordlessly handing back the phone. He curls up on himself then, crouching to the floor, hoping the dread he feels creeping from his stomach doesn’t herald what is to come.

“What did he say?” Joshua asks softly, nudging him with a socked foot.

“He wants me to meet Kim Mingyu. He says there is something.”

“He’s gonna bring him here,” Minghao says as he tucks the phone back in his pocket, turning to Jihoon. “Since, you know, you can’t leave.”

“Like, right now?” Chan pipes up, and Minghao shrugs.

“He said as soon as possible. Might as well get this over with.”

“What do we do while we wait?”

“Eat?” Minghao suggests, gaze trailing over everyone’s faces. There is no protest.

Jihoon finds himself seated between Joshua and Vernon, facing the kitchen door as they are back to peeling fruits, exchanging small talk and pleasantries he doesn’t partake in. There is an underlying tension running through all of them; it’s in Chan’s flitting stares, in Vernon leaning too heavily against his side, in Jeonghan’s forced smiles, Joshua’s stiff stance and Minghao’s quiet. It buzzes in Jihoon’s limbs, restless and avid and he watches the clock tick off the minutes above the door. It has been half an hour since Wonwoo’s call. Three quarters. Fifty minutes. He knows his heart would beat too loud against his ribs if it could, he knows his lungs would feel too tight, his palms sweaty. Yet Jihoon isn’t sure what he is expecting. He isn’t sure what he wants to happen. But _he knows you_ , Wonwoo had said, _he knows you_ , and that is enough to set Jihoon on edge. Someone in this strange, lonely world, someone who knows his face, what he used to look like, how he used to smile, sometimes, seated under camphor trees.

There are voices down the hallway and Jihoon’s gaze snaps to the kitchen’s door, hands tugging on the hem of the sweater he is still wearing. All have fallen quiet around him and he can hear their thunderous hearts, their held breaths, hands stilling on their plates. Wonwoo appears first, ducking his head, gaze falling to Jihoon and there’s a taller man trailing his steps, one who lets out a gasp like a sob as he sees him and there’s a thousand tears welling in his eyes.

Jihoon stares, and Jihoon knows him. He knows the clean, savage curve of his bones, he knows the dark eyes staring back, he knows how that skin would feel were he to touch, how those hands fit around his own; he knows the taste of those parted lips and the sound of his voice, he knows the answers, quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love – and the heart he doesn’t have spears itself on his ribs, and his empty lungs fill with an element denser than air, and it’s him, it is, no more ashes upon his closed eyelids, no more dust in his bright hair, no more earth sullying his polished bones.

  
  


**4.**

Mingyu agrees to follow the shaman yet he doesn’t really know why. It was nothing the shaman had said, too cryptic and vague to make any sense. But there had been a strange hope in his unsettling eyes, an urgency in his voice, something pressing that bore no delay and so Mingyu had followed, a bit despondent, a bit removed. He hadn’t asked any questions about this man he was supposed to meet, and there was no expectations as he had stared through the subway windows, his reflection pale against the glass, fading entirely as the car had left the underground.

“We’re almost there,” Wonwoo says, smiling back to him as they turn down a side street. It’s quiet, empty, the grey skies of late fall raining their pale light onto them – Mingyu realizes he doesn’t really know what time it is, how long it had taken them to get here.

“It’s just that house down the block,” Wonwoo says, and Mingyu has to stop.

“What is it?” the shaman asks, turning back to him.

 _I’ve already been there,_ Mingyu wants to tell him, yet it cannot be true; only rarely had he been to this part of the city, never down that street. Yet there is an ache under his heart, an ache for cherished places long lost and forgotten, and if he stares at the house Wonwoo pointed at it unfurls in a longing that chokes his lungs, wilting the words in his throat; and Wonwoo is looking back at him with worry as Mingyu tries to swallow the sobs that threaten to spill.

“I’m fine,” he says, “sorry. We can go.”

The shaman stares for a second more before turning, walking down too quickly, Mingyu stumbling behind him. As they stop at the threshold of an unassuming shop, Mingyu has to steel himself once more. If he closes his eyes it seems he can hear an absent wind in long-gone branches, the cawing of unseen birds and a voice underneath it all, a voice that becomes him closer. When Wonwoo softly touches his wrist and Mingyu’s eyes snaps open there is a sharp pang of disappointment that the shaman is not who he wants him to be.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” he asks and Mingyu can only nod, following him inside. It doesn’t leave him, this feeling that he knows this place, that he has been here before, when the house was smaller, shabbier, the light of day streaming through paper windows, falling on dark hair and a sleeping face. Gingerly he follows Wonwoo through red curtains, hums absently as the shaman leads him down a dim hallway, talking incessantly as if trying to cover something else, something thrumming through the house itself, something that spills a wistful nostalgia in Mingyu, his fingers brushing along the wall.

They reach an open door at the far end, the light of the room spilling on the wooden floor and Mingyu follows Wonwoo inside, voices belonging to the gathered people there fading to silence as they enter. Mingyu straightens, staring at the faces around the table, their gazes lifted towards him. And there is a sob tearing through his chest, a sharp stab of pain wringing his heart. He’s gazing upon _him_ , seated there motionless at the table. His eyes fill with a thousand tears he had left to shed as he details the outline of his eyes, the curve of his mouth, the edge of a sharp jaw and there is no mistake in the thundering of his heart, in the tremors of his hands. It is him, the one from a thousand dreams he had cupped into his hands like fireflies, the light of a love too sharp to bear carving a dismal longing into his flesh, a consuming want that shatters against his ribs as he’s rising his helpless hands, opening a silent mouth on wilted words.

It is slow, so slow as the man rises and steps towards him, a hesitant hand reaching for his own and he had wished to hold these hands again, feel their warmth and the love that they held.

“I waited,” he hears himself say, “I waited to find you for so long,” and he tugs on the man’s hand until he falls into his chest, until he can cradle him like something precious, until the man fists a hand in the fabric of his shirt and pulls, pulls as if they were still too far apart and when he rises his face his eyes are wide, and _you were dead_ , he says, voice a chocked whisper, _you were dead, I watched them kill you_ and Mingyu frames his face in his warm hands, this face he has loved so well, this face he has missed through a thousand sleepless nights and he bends to kiss the adored lips yet they are cold, cold as the grave and there is no heart beating against his own, there is no breath ghosting against his lips.

“What happened to you?” he asks in a whisper yet he dreads this knowledge, Mingyu realizes; there is something terrible written in the desperate eyes, in the helpless hold of the cold hands, in the dark signs he can see cresting the outline of a collarbone; something terrible Mingyu isn’t sure he’s ready to hear.

“I was alone,” the man says, “I was lost, I couldn’t find you,” and Mingyu holds him tighter, cradling him to his chest; he doesn’t mind the cold of his flesh, he doesn’t mind the tears coloring his lashes, he needs to hold him, feel him there against his beating heart and this is a yearning born of a thousand years of solitude, of longing, of a loss that could never be forgiven. But he’s touching him, he hears his voice and feels his hands; and it seems that the thrumming of the house has resolved itself in a low hum, whispers of shadows that twine about them, softly singing, warm where he is cold, gentle where his desperate hold leaves dent in Mingyu’s flesh, and this is a piece of the divine that he has found, no matter how cold, no matter how broken and lost.

“I missed you so much,” Mingyu says, “Jihoon, I missed you so much,” and there’s a broken sob against his chest, avid hands clinging to his back and this name on his tongue that tastes like home, that tastes like love.

Mingyu pulls Jihoon away from his chest, warm hands framing his adored face and he stares at the colors in his lashes that comes with the tears, and he kisses them away, gently, lips brushing a closed eyelid as Jihoon shivers.

“You know my name,” Jihoon whispers, “you remember.”

“I remember everything,” Mingyu says and he cradles him to himself again, kissing the top of his head before looking up; they are not alone in this room, and it hits him how all had washed away, the light and the sounds and the smell of spices, swallowed by a brighter light, a brutal pull. The shaman is still standing near the door, the men at the table are still staring and something rises in Mingyu, something too close to enmity yet he doesn’t know for which slight he angers.

“Why is he here? You said he couldn’t leave the house, that’s why I had to come,” he says, turning to Wonwoo who holds his hands out in a helpless gesture, darting nervous gazes to the men at the table.

“Why are you keeping him here?” Mingyu repeats, voice rising with his frustration; they are staring amongst themselves, hesitating, and the one who speaks up looks much too young to take precedence.

“We didn’t kidnap your boyfriend, if that’s what you’re asking,” he says, the kid next to him sending an elbow to his ribs.

“I mean, technically we kinda did,” Mingyu hears Wonwoo mumble next to him but his gaze has alighted on the one who spoke first, the one who’s shrinking in his chair under his gaze.

“He’s not my boyfriend,” Mingyu hears himself say, a removed part of himself wondering why his voice is so acrid, why his hold on Jihoon has tightened. “The years grew and my love for him remained despite his absence, and in the night I remembered each of his gestures, each of his words. I didn’t mind the iron against my ribs for he is beloved above all else that dies, above all else that ever lived. I knew his face and the sound of his voice when I had forgotten his name; part of my heart lies with him, part of his beats in mine. So no, he’s not my boyfriend. He’s all and he’s more.”

In the heavy silence that follows Mingyu hears a soft laugh, feels gentle hands pushing against his chest; he looks down, down into Jihoon’s dark eyes glinting with mirth and something more, something that pulls at his heart, something too lovely to be looked upon.

“Do not blame them for anything,” he says and his voice his soft, a wistful lilt curling over his words as he raises his hands, the sleeves of the sweater he’s wearing falling back on his forearms.

“Do you remember these?” Jihoon asks and Mingyu stares at the black signs inked on his skin, disappearing into his sleeves at the turn of a fair elbow. And Mingyu does remember, he has seen them before, engraved in rough bark, painted on charms that never worked and Jihoon had drawn them on Mingyu’s own skin, too, hoping to lift the worst of his illness and Mingyu had felt their warm magic, he had felt their thrumming power yet it had not been enough, the fire consuming him burning much fiercely. But they were sharper then, their cutting edges now smoothed by time and oblivion and Mingyu thumbs at their withered shapes – the runes are still warm, still pulsing there under his touch.

“They brought me back,” Jihoon is saying in a whisper and Mingyu’s gaze snaps to his own. “They brought me back so I could find you, so I could remember what is felt like, to be alive, and free. This is their magic, and it comes from my own.”

Mingyu looks beyond Jihoon to the men gathered at the table, to Wonwoo now standing besides them and a there is a sorrow pulling at his heart, an anguish he cannot quite name.

“Brought you back from where?” he asks Jihoon without looking at him and he can see the men’s expressions shift, their gazes falling, hands tightening around those they hold. Mingyu already knows, he does, but some part of him needs to hear it, to make that grief real, take it outside of himself where it had festered as he had wondered about the dream one’s fate.

“I died too, that day. I followed you into the grave where the magic found me.”

Vines grow in Mingyu’s lungs, ensnaring his heart and the breath he lets out is a broken one. He holds Jihoon tighter against himself, shadows twining in his embrace and Jihoon is cold, dismally so, spilling ice in his veins and Mingyu understands then how much has been lost, how much has been stolen. He keeps him there, letting the cold of a treasured flesh chill his body, letting the silence of a stilled heart quiet his own.

There’s a whisper at the edge of his hearing, a hand on his arm steering him out of the room and Mingyu follows blindly, Jihoon tucked in his side, unheard footsteps trailing up the stairs. Their guide brings them to a room where the walls are lined with books, window opened on a soft breeze and when the door shuts on their solitude Mingyu frames Jihoon’s face in his hands again, looking down at his dark, weary eyes and he wishes he had the words to tell him, tell him how much he had missed him, how his flesh had longed for his touch, how his absence had wearied him out, hollowed his bones, silenced his heart.

How, even when nothing knew that he was gone, when nothing knew of his body under the ground, Mingyu had mourned him, remembering the warmth of his hands, the gentleness of his voice, the softness of his touch, seated there in the shadows of the young trees, under skies yet clement, when there was still bliss, where there was still happiness left in the world. But there are no words for this quiet pain, there is no sound to this sorrow. And so Mingyu holds Jihoon there against his beating heart, against a wound that will never heal.

  
  


**5.**

It is quiet when they leave, stirred by Wonwoo who leads them upstairs. Chan glances to Vernon, to Joshua on the other side of Jihoon’s empty place and there’s something disquieting in their gazes, something that doesn’t quite fit with what they just witnessed. Chan clears his throat, wishing to break the silence but he does not dare; there are echoes in this silence, something almost sacred that should not be disturbed. And so he falls quiet, glancing to Minghao who does not look at him, to Jeonghan who is staring at Joshua, worry on his features, lips parting on the words Chan swallowed back.

“What is it?” Jeonghan asks, jolting Joshua’s hand in his, Joshua who looks up at him as if awoken from a dream.

“What do you mean?” he asks, and Jeonghan rolls his eyes, concern lending a harsh edge to his next words.

“There is something you want to say. Just say it.”

Joshua looks at him, teeth worrying at his bottom lip, before his gaze drifts to Minghao still lost in thoughts, to Vernon who stares back.

“Did you feel something?” he asks to no one in particular yet Minghao shakes his head, finally looking up and Chan finds the same unease on his handsome face.

“I did,” Vernon says then, and he seems reluctant to speak, words dragging in his throat, gaze flitting to Chan’s hand in his. “These were two dead souls,” he says slowly, and a chill curls against Chan’s spine.

“What do you mean?” Jeonghan asks and Vernon shrugs, looking up at him with a sadness Chan hadn’t seen in a long time, one he had hoped would never return.

“I’m not sure,” Vernon says, “I’m not sure what it means, but, yeah. Mingyu’s soul feels like an old soul. One that shouldn’t still be there. It’s frayed. Dimmed.”

“As if it’s dying,” Joshua finishes for him, “as if it’s already dead.”

Vernon nods, wide eyed and scared and Chan wishes Joshua didn’t look so grim, didn’t look so old, as if he had already lived through all of human’s misery only to see it helplessly echo again before his weary eyes.

“What does that mean exactly?” Chan asks hesitantly, waiting as no answer comes. Minghao is the first to move, standing up too brusquely, staring at his plate before him for a quiet second before he lifts his eyes to them, alighting on Jeonghan, Chan wondering what kind of comfort he finds in these bright eyes.

“I’m going to do some research,” he says eventually, and Jeonghan nods to him, an unspoken word flitting between them.

“He died at twenty-three,” Jeonghan tells him then, voice thin as an afterthought. “Jihoon. He told me he was twenty-three.”

“How old is Mingyu?” Minghao asks and Jeonghan shrugs, eyes falling back to Joshua’s hand in his, detailing the soft skin as if all answers laid there for him to see. Minghao nods, once, and Chan watches him leave, unhurried footsteps that do not climb the stairs but move forward, down past the red curtains, down to that part of the house Chan had yet to see, where they kept the real magic, Vernon had told him, where Minghao had locked his secret treasures.

Jeonghan lets out a heavy breath and they should be happy, Chan thinks; they have found who they were looking for, yet the air feels heavy with unshared thoughts, with unnamed worry and something dark he can feel lurking at the edges, waiting, binding its time.

“How is it possible, though?” Chan asks then, the silence bearing too heavily down on him. “How is it possible that it’s really him?”

Joshua smiles a weary smile, his hand leaving Jeonghan’s as he stretches his arms above his head.

“Many religions believe in reincarnation. It’s not unheard of.”

“Well it is unheard of by me,” Chan mumbles and Joshua’s smile grows into something more genuine as his gaze alights on Chan.

“You’re fine with raising people from the dead and Vernon turning into a bird but reincarnation is a bit much?”

Chan winces, Vernon hiding a snort beside him.

“Well,” he says, “these I’ve seen with my own eyes so it’s a bit hard to oppose.”

“You’ve seen reincarnation, now, too.”

“Ah, it’s a bit freaky,” Chan says, raking nervous hands through his hair. “Does it happen to everyone? I’m not sure I want to be reincarnated.”

Joshua shrugs, going back to peeling the apple he was taking care of before Wonwoo came back, Mingyu on his heels.

“I don’t know for sure. But this is certainly a special case.”

“I’ll take that,” Chan says, reclining back in his chair and it’s Vernon’s turn to fidget, leaning forward against the table, unsettled gaze falling to Joshua.

“If we felt something,” he says, “wouldn’t Jihoon feel it too?”

Joshua’s eyes widened slightly, and he exchanges a glance with Jeonghan, something bearing the weight of unspoken words.

“He must have,” Jeonghan answers then, “or he will.”

  
  


**6.**

If Jihoon doesn’t need to sleep, Mingyu does. They have moved to the old sofa where a deep slumber has taken hold of him, slowly, softening his features and blurring his gaze. A deep slumber brought about by a weariness anchored deep in his flesh, by a relief too intense to fathom, by emotions too strong to bear. And so he has closed his eyes as he leaned against Jihoon, against this body whom he’d missed so intensely, and Jihoon had watched him as consciousness had slowly left him, breath by breath, lips slightly parted on unspoken words.

And Jihoon watches him, watches his adored face, traces the contours of his features with a gentle finger as Mingyu sleeps and he cannot quite trust the feeling of him there against him; the softness of his skin, the shine of his hair under the soft light, the rise and fall of his chest – alive when he should be dead, when he should be dust. He holds Mingyu’s hand in his own, thumbs at the soft skin inside his wrist, tinted blue and green where the blood runs, where the heart pounds, where his own is silent. Yet it seems to Jihoon that something is stirring in his chest, something that had long been silent, awakened by soft footsteps, light finally reaching the darkness where it dwelt, dust falling from the rafters.

He brushes back a strand of dark hair, Mingyu’s breath moth-like against his skin and still Jihoon watches. Nothing was ever this beautiful, nothing was ever this adored – the turn of his mouth, the dark eyelashes, the curve of a high cheekbone. Jihoon closes his eyes, an ache in his chest he cannot explain. Again there are tears prickling at the corner of his eyes and he bends over Mingyu’s form, tenderly cradling him to himself as you would a wounded child, as you would a dying man. There is a hundred years worth of longing pushing against his ribs, a hundred years worth of anguish stirring in his quiet chest and he knows nothing is ever given for free yet Jihoon cannot fathom the price of the man under his hand, the price of the love under his stilled heart.

He lays his hand flat against Mingyu’s chest, feeling his heart beat, his breast rise and fall with each breaths and there’s something else there, a quiet thrum, a low, struggling pulse and Jihoon presses down to chase this eluding feeling, a frown forming on his features – there is magic there, an old, withered one, fading with each passing heartbeats. But Jihoon doesn’t have time to uncover what that is; there is a tentative knock at the door, the following silence full of a held breath.

“You may enter,” he says softly and it’s Vernon who pushes the door open, standing awkwardly on the threshold, glancing behind him as if afraid of being caught.

“What is it?” Jihoon asks and Vernon fully enters then, closing the door behind him as he leans against it.

“I was just wondering,” Vernon says, his voice lowering as his gaze falls to Mingyu’s sleeping form, “I was just wondering if everything was alright.”

“It is,” Jihoon answers, “I think,” he finishes, looking down at Mingyu, at the traces of exhaustion settling in grooves on his handsome face, at his own hand resting against his chest, that strange pulse beating under his fingers.

Vernon is still leaning against the door, a worry in his face Jihoon cannot quite ascertain and he is warring with himself, it seems, mouth opening and closing on words that won’t get out.

“What is it?” Jihoon asks again, and Vernon comes do a decision.

“Nothing,” he says, “nothing yet,” and he slides against the door, sitting there on the hardwood floor.

“What he said, in the kitchen,” Vernon starts again after a silence, looking almost surprised by the sound of his own voice when Jihoon looks up. A blush rises to his cheeks yet he continues, words tumbling from his lips like a secret.

“I don’t think I could ever love anyone that much,” he ends almost guiltily, looking down at his hands wringing together in his lap and Jihoon cocks his head, considering him in silence. And he remembers, he remembers how Chan is in each of Vernon’s memories, he remembers how Vernon’s hands always seek his, how they stand leaning into each other, how his gaze softens when Chan’s voice is heard, when he laughs, when he sighs.

“Not now, maybe,” Jihoon says, “but you will.”

Vernon looks up at him, lips parting on words he doesn’t say as his gaze falls to Jihoon’s hand on Mingyu’s chest, to the way his head is cradled in his lap.

“How did you meet him?” he asks then, voice shy, gaze flitting upwards. Jihoon remains silent for a while but there is no harm in talking and so he does, looking up at Vernon.

“What do you know of Kubilai Khan?”

Vernon’s eyes glaze over as his lips part and Jihoon chuckles, shaking his head.

“Nevermind, then. He started a great dynasty that conquered our country. Towards the end there were a lot of skirmishes, of rebellions; always soldiers would trample our fields and wreck havoc amongst the villages. And so the king sent forth soldiers to protect us. He was one of them.”

Jihoon looks down at Mingyu, remembering how he’d looked then; his hair much longer, the uniform he’d worn, the round-pommeled sword at his side.

“And what happened then?” Vernon prompts, Jihoon looking back to him. It is strange to speak of this. It has been so long it almost feels like it happened to someone else yet the memories are still there, vivid in his mind; the _gut_ the villagers had asked him to perform, how he had stood there under the yew tree, listening to the beat of the drums and the wailing of the _piri_ , how his feet had struck the soft earth as he danced, the murmurs of the praying villagers twining in his own song; how his body had moved, clothing rustling about him and he had seen the soldiers when he’d raised his eyes, standing there at the edge of the square, looming tall behind the kneeling villagers, watching him with dark eyes.

And he’d seen _him_ , the way he stood slightly slouched, at ease with a hand resting on the pommel of his sword, the colors of his clothing stark against the grey sky. Somehow it feels to Jihoon he had already known then that this man was linked to him, that he would come to mean more than Jihoon could ever expect. And he had danced as the villagers prayed, he had danced as the soldiers watched and when they had taken up their rounds Mingyu alone had remained, watching as if transfixed, eyes dark, lips slightly parted.

“Then we came to talking,” Jihoon says simply, “and that was it.”

Vernon makes a frustrated noise, leaning forward, elbows on his crossed legs.

“You’re a terrible story-teller,” he says, “how did you come to talking? How did you fall in love?”

“I think we already were,” Jihoon says, “I think sometimes you just know. He came to me once. The sickness started with the soldiers. He had hoped for a cure, but I had none to give.”

“Well, that’s a bit grim,” Vernon says, leaning back against the door and Jihoon smiles a wistful smile, looking down at Mingyu’s sleeping face, brushing hair away from his brow with gentle fingers.

“It wasn’t always so. There were kind days, too, and we were happy. But there was a phantom in our midst and in the end we weren’t able to eschew it. But there was a kindness, there, too. ”

“What do you mean?” Vernon asks in a whisper, wide eyes trained on Mingyu’s form, on Jihoon’s wistful gaze.

“That was a kindness, that he did not have to see me die. I could not save him from the sickness, but in the end he was spared this pain.”

Vernon remains silent, a shaky breath escaping him as he looks down at Mingyu and Jihoon remembers this, too, painfully well. How Mingyu had dragged him back, shielded him with his own wrecked body when he could barely stand, how the thrust meant for Jihoon had buried the iron deep in his flesh, how he had stumbled, falling back, back to the edge of the grave and Jihoon had held him but blood had made his hands slippery and he had lost him, he had lost him and watched him fall.

“We think there’s something wrong,” Vernon suddenly blurts out, Jihoon’s gaze snapping to him.

“What?”

“That’s what I’ve come to tell you,” Vernon repeats, a growing distress in his eyes, in his voice. “We think there’s something wrong with Mingyu.”

Jihoon looks down, white noise in his ears and he stares at Mingyu’s exhausted face, stares at his own hand against his chest and the pulse he can still feel there; old, withering, a rusted tether fading to nothing. And Vernon is right, Jihoon knows then, a painful hollow swallowing his heart. There is something wrong with Mingyu.

  
  



	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey everyone, I am so sorry this update took so long. I sort of was in a weird headspace, maybe due to lockdown being a thing again here, and so I haven't written anything in those past weeks. I guess I am starting to find a rythm again as I finally managed to finish the chapter. I hope you guys will like it! Thank you for not giving up on me lol

**1.**

Jihoon finds that there are some things he had forgotten. The softness of Mingyu’s moth-like breath upon his skin; the way the light turns him golden, sometimes, sends his eyes glinting like the night sky. How his voice breaks when Jihoon touches deft fingers to his skin, how Mingyu’s breaths catch in his chest as he inches closer, always, never close enough it seems and Jihoon wonders if Mingyu feels it too, that deep, lunar pull thrumming within the cavity of his silent heart.

And Jihoon finds that some things have changed, too. There is no urgency in Mingyu’s gestures, not anymore. He is slow, languid, touches lasting for a millennia, languorous kisses upon closed eyelids that bring a silver shine to the dark. There is no war to be fought, here. There is no sickness chasing the marrow of his bones. His hands aren’t as calloused, his body soft under Jihoon’s fingertips and he feels the warmth of his flesh, his perfect skin where the scars of a soldier’s life have disappeared. And so Jihoon asks.

He asks what Mingyu’s life has been like this time, and he listens to his voice whispering in the dim light of the late evening, words weaving the tapestry of a quiet, even life. _Even before the dreams started it always felt like I was waiting for something, something that I missed_ , Mingyu says, words lost in the crook of Jihoon’s neck. _Maybe I was waiting for you_. And Jihoon kisses him then, and Mingyu’s hands lose themselves in his hair, drawing shivers from his cold flesh yet Mingyu doesn’t seem to mind; he has enough warmth to share and Jihoon’s robes rustle between them, the ones he can never take off, the ones that tether him to this semblance of life just like the runes etched on his skin Mingyu traces with his tongue.

Yet Vernon’s words echo at the back of Jihoon’s mind. There is something wrong, and Jihoon feels it under his fingers, sees it in the exhausted lines of Mingyu’s adored face, knows it in the way he sleeps like the dead, curled up on his side, breath shallow and heartbeat slowing to nothing, Jihoon’s ear pressed against his chest. There is something wrong, and if Jihoon stares for long enough he can see the skull underneath the skin staring back with empty eyes, he can see the flesh of Mingyu’s warm hand waste away to nothing, naked bones straining to hold him. Jihoon knows, then. There is an empty grave somewhere, empty but for the consuming darkness that fills it, clinging to the roots of a century-old tree, echoes of a silence too heavy to bear. And it’s calling them back, their own famished grave, pulling against the strings holding them to this life. Jihoon knows, as he curls against Mingyu’s side, Jihoon knows that they cannot evade it for much longer.

**2.**

The steps creak under Wonwoo’s weight as he follows them down to the basement where the reserve is, the reserve and the archives where he had spent so many hours frantically turning the pages of yellowed records, dust on his fingers and cobwebs in his hair. This part of his life feels almost blurry to his mind, as if it had happened to someone else, someone else without a face, someone lost and hopeless. Yet there is a dull ache in his chest where shadows used to be, a hollow within him he had not yet managed to fill. Wonwoo had not quite believed it, when it was over. When he had awaken to find himself empty of the horror that had pushed against the seams of his mind, cruel and relentless.

It was still there, sometimes, conjured up by his own mind in slumber, nightmares that left him with metal in his jaw and a quiet dread that barely thawed under the light of day. But it was just that – nightmares, and a soft despondency Minghao always picked up on, quietly watching him, letting him find the comfort he needed in soft touches and treasured smiles. Minghao, who had locked himself in the archives hours ago and had not seen the light of day since. Wonwoo adjusts the tray of food he’s holding and takes the last few steps to the landing, kicking open the door to the lonely room.

Minghao’s easy to find. He has cleared a space between the shelves, pushed boxes together to act as a makeshift table upon which a slew of document is spread around his laptop, columns upon columns of names and dates scribbled on their yellowed pages.

“What’s all this?” Wonwoo asks as he kneels opposite Minghao, shifting a heavy book to put his tray in its place. Minghao’s gaze barely flicks up to him before it falls back to the list he’s following with a finger, nail bitten to the quick.

“Census. And necrology listings.”

“Well that warms my heart,” Wonwoo says as he settles more comfortably on the dusty floor, crossing his legs. “Why are you looking at that?”

“I asked Mingyu his birth date,” Minghao finally looks up, brushing away his fringe and righting his glasses. He looks disheveled, and tired, and Wonwoo knows this face well; it had looked upon him with the same desperate glint in the dark eyes, the same tightness on the lovely mouth. Wonwoo pushes towards him a small sandwich Minghao takes absently, shoving half of it into his mouth, crumbs falling on the notebook opened before him.

“Why?” Wonwoo asks, handing Minghao a napkin.

“He must have had other incarnations, before that one,” Minghao says as he dusts his notebook, finishing the sandwich in two bites. He makes grabby hands at Wonwoo, who gives him another.

“Okay.”

“And if he did, they must have already died.”

“I’m not sure I like where this is going,” Wonwoo remarks offhandedly and Minghao offers him a bitter smile. He stops to finish his second sandwich, wiping his hands on the napkin before he turns his notebook to Wonwoo, pushing it across the table. There are dates scribbled on the page in Minghao’s sharp handwriting, a couple of names attached to them.

“What’s this?”

“I went as far back as 1860,” Minghao explains, grabbing for himself the glass of water perched on Wonwoo’s tray. “I combed through all the necrology listings I could find for violent deaths. According to the census, these people were all born on the 6th of April.”

“Like Mingyu?”

“Like Mingyu. And they died at twenty-two.”

“Mingyu’s age right now.”

“You’re following, that’s nice,” Minghao says with a smile and Wonwoo rolls his eyes, looking back down at the notebook.

“Do you notice anything else? Like, this guy,” Minghao points to a name at the top of the page, the date of his passing – 1975 – sloppily circled. Wonwoo can only look on helplessly as Minghao launches into an explanation.

“1974 plus twenty-two, that’s 1996. He died in July. You add nine months to that, and you have April 1997. And this works for some other people on this list.”

Wonwoo looks up into Minghao’s eyes, noticing the frantic edge of his gaze, the place where his hair stick up where he must have run his hands through it, the tight squeeze of his jaw when he clicks it shut.

“I know this is ludicrous and I sound like a maniac,” Minghao starts again, hands flying to the notebook, “but I swear it works, like, take this dude from 1860, it’s the same thing, he died in July 1882 and nine months later you get to this dude born in April 1883 who died in 1905. It’s twenty-two years, each time.”

Minghao looks up, scrutinizing Wonwoo for any traces of skepticism, for any sign of disbelief. He doesn’t find any, Wonwoo’s face carefully blank, the last of Minghao’s words coming out in a whisper.

“It’s a cycle, Wonwoo. I think it just, I think it’s just been going on since Jihoon died like a millennia ago.”

“Fourteenth century,” Wonwoo says absently, gaze stuck to the names on the page.

“What?”

“Vernon asked his history teacher for plague outbreaks. Fourteenth century is the big one, the most likely.”

“Okay, great, I’m not gonna go that far back.”

Wonwoo lets out a sharp laugh, looking up at Minghao and they stare at each other, the enormity of Minghao’s theory weighting between them like an anvil. And the room feels too small, suddenly, too tight, the high shelves bearing down on them, the light from the single dangling bulb lending a sickish hue to Minghao’s skin. Wonwoo shifts, uneasy, dropping his gaze back to the page, to these names that must have belonged to people bearing Minghao’s face, carrying the same misery, the same unexplained longing.

“Is there any way you could find a picture of one of them?” Wonwoo asks then, fingers tracing the sharp lines of Minghao’s handwriting.

“What?”

“Jihoon recognized him. He must look the same as he did. If one of them does, too, then… They you’re right.”

 _Then you’re right, and Mingyu is dying_ , Wonwoo doesn’t say yet the words hang heavy between them, Minghao letting out a choked noise as he grabs at his laptop to pull it towards him. Wonwoo moves then, skirting around the makeshift table to sit beside Minghao, a little too close. Minghao immediately leans his weight against him, fingers not leaving the keyboard as Wonwoo slides a hand up his shoulders, rubbing small soothing circles over the tension he can feel there. It feels like they’re skirting too close to the edge of a knowledge not meant for them, and Wonwoo knows they can both feel it, thrumming there at Minghao’s fingertips, its absent weight stifling the air in their lungs, quieting their words.

Wonwoo isn’t sure how much time passes. There is no more food on the tray, the water glass emptied. His crossed legs are numb and he shifts to accommodate them, Minghao absently shifting with him as if their bodies made one. Wonwoo listens to the soft tapping of the computer keys, to Minghao’s occasional sighs, trying to push back that nascent dread he feels within him, the one telling him that Minghao is right, that Mingyu is dying, that Jihoon found him only to lose him again. And he remembers Jeonghan’s face as he had learned what Joshua had decided to do, all those months ago, the emptiness of his gaze and the grief that had devoured him, traces of which can still be seen, sometimes, when Jeonghan thinks no one is looking, gazing at the rain tapping against the window. Wonwoo wonders how Jihoon would bear that kind of grief. If he would simply crumble, asking them to release him, send him back to the earth.

There’s a sharp intake of breath, Minghao poking him in the side with a sharp elbow and Wonwoo shifts to look at him but Minghao’s gaze is stuck to his computer screen, face pale and eyes wide.

“It’s him,” he says, turning the laptop towards Wonwoo.

On the screen is a black and white picture of soldiers seated at the back of a truck, their grim faces looking straight at the photographer, rifles clutched in their hands and helmets down over their eyes. And in the middle of the row, taller than everyone else, sits Mingyu. He looks older in the picture, exhaustion plain on his thinned face, his uniform sitting uneasily on his broad shoulders, dirty jacket matching the grime on the scrapped hands holding his rifle.

“Did he die in the war?” Wonwoo asks and his voice sounds faraway to his own ears, his gaze stuck to Mingyu seated there in the truck, off to fight brothers from the other side of a made up frontier in a war that should never have happened.

Minghao is nodding, bringing the laptop back to himself yet Wonwoo cannot tear his gaze away from the young man in the picture, his chest constricting, lungs full of choking vines.

“Killed in action at the second battle of Old Baldy, in July 1952.” Minghao says as he reads off the screen.

“And it was for nothing,” he adds, a quiet sadness to his words that claws at Wonwoo’s heart. “No one managed to hold the hills. In ‘53 the battle lines were exactly the same as they were before.”

“He would have died anyway,” Wonwoo blurts out, realizing as the words leave his mouth how far from comfort they really are.

“Not the others, though,” Minghao says in a whisper and Wonwoo’s gaze falls back to the picture, to the young men hold up there in the truck, ill-fitting uniforms and young faces, too young for such a place; there’s a kid next to Mingyu who looks barely eighteen, mushed against his side as if looking for support, stare blank, mouth set in a grim line. And Mingyu would have known their names, would have sat with them to eat, would have watched them in battle, would have watched them die just as they watched him.

“He wasn’t able to escape it, in the end,” Minghao says eventually, breaking the silence that had fallen upon them, heavy with wistful thoughts.

“Escape what?”

“War,” Minghao says as he stretches. “Misery. He lived through the mongol invasions, through the plague, through the Japanese colonization, the second world war, the Korean war… All the while dying at twenty-two just to start again.”

Wonwoo rubs his cold hands against his face, detaching his gaze from the grieving faces of the young men on the screen.

“This sucks,” he says, because there is nothing else to say. Minghao laughs a tired laugh, shaking his head as he curls in on himself, bringing his knees up against his chest as a deep sigh escapes him.

“I guess it does. No wonder Vernon said his soul felt old. It must be wrecked after all this.”

“Is there any way to break the cycle?” Wonwoo asks, not looking at Minghao, afraid of seeing the answer bare in his dark eyes.

“I don’t know,” Minghao answers. “If there is, it is beyond my skill set.”

Wonwoo hums under his breath, leaning his head on Minghao’s shoulder who remains still, staring at his computer’s screen, at this other Mingyu who went to sacrifice his life for a lost cause.

“Maybe it isn’t beyond Jihoon’s skills,” Wonwoo says on a sudden inspiration. “Isn’t he supposed to be all powerful?”

“Maybe,” Wonwoo can feel Minghao shrug underneath him. “I don’t want to be the one to tell him Mingyu is dying, though. And has been repeatedly dying for hundred of years, and will keep doing it for a hundred more until the end of times.”

“Maybe you can avoid putting it like this,” Wonwoo remarks and Minghao has his tired laugh again, one that has Wonwoo straighten up to bring him into himself, Minghao curling against his chest, easy and warm.

“We will find a way,” Wonwoo says more confidently that he feels. “We always do.”

“What if this time we don’t?” Minghao sighs. “What if this time, the price is too high to pay?”

Wonwoo’s arms tighten around Minghao, his face finding the crook of his neck and there is no answer to give, none that could satiate this grief, this worry rapping like crow’s wings in his chest. And so the silence stretches, heavy and indifferent under the stare of dead men.

**3.**

Mingyu finds that Jihoon fits in every fold of his body. Against each plane and every edges. His flesh is ice under his hand, smooth and cold yet Mingyu doesn’t mind. He draws the shapes of the black runes inked upon his golden skin, traces the lines of his bones with eager fingers, swallows every words with parted lips. Mingyu did not think that he could be found. That he could see home again, that the restless anguish within his heart would ever be soothed. Yet Jihoon’s quiet voice settles in his chest, unraveling the knot of sorrow found there, one that is not entirely his own, one that has grown from hundred of years of solitude.

If his conscious mind doesn’t remember, his soul does. Jihoon’s every gesture, every smile, every tip of his head and touch of his hand. And _I missed you_ , Mingyu whispers against his lips, against his skin, words that will never uncover the true weight of that feeling, one that had brought him to his knees, that had bent him to the earth, centuries worth of tears burning his eyes. Nothing is ever enough. Every touch calls of another, every word waits for the next. Mingyu folds Jihoon against him and wishes he could hide him behind his ribs, keep him there, lend him his heart to pulse warmth in his icy veins. And so they move against each other in this strange house that won’t let Jihoon go, in this strange space where time seems to slow.

Yet deep within him Mingyu knows something is waiting. He is falling into a torpor, one that stretches his slumber and slows his mind, one that blurs every edge and mutes every sound. He is called back, called back to a place where darkness awaits, the threads of his being unraveled by a weariness he cannot elude, one that weight upon his eyelids and kisses his lips silent. And so he clings to Jihoon, to his words and his touch and each of his gasps, to his lithe body and the smell of incense he carries.

“Mingyu,” he hears at the limit of his consciousness, lost in the silvery dark waiting behind his eyelids. “Mingyu, it’s okay. It’s going to be fine, this time, it will.”

He nods, maybe, and there’s a cool hand upon his forehead, soft lips against his. He drifts off, wishing he hadn’t heard the doubt in the beloved voice, hadn’t felt the tremors in the fingers. It’s okay, he wants to say. _I will find you again_. But his body is already lost, sinking in soft, miry clay, down to depths where none can follow.

**4.**

They find Joshua sitting at Minghao’s desk, Jeonghan next to him on the rickety stool he dragged there. Chan and Vernon are spread out on the floor, peering at the same page of a heavy volume and Minghao isn’t sure what they had set-out to do but they must have gotten distracted along the way; on the page is a medieval illumination of a battle scene, and they are busy snickering at the horses when Minghao enters, Wonwoo on his heels.

As Wonwoo pushes the door close, he spares a glance towards the library where Jihoon and Mingyu still remain. The gesture brings a renewed grief to Minghao’s tired mind and he looks down at the floor before rising his stare to Joshua. They should be happy, he thinks, this should have been their end, simple and nice.

“What is it?” Joshua is asking, bringing everyone’s attention to them. Minghao shuffles closer, Wonwoo stopping next to him and lacing their fingers together. Minghao recounts his discovery, feeling increasingly agitated, watching as Joshua’s face darkens, as Jeonghan’s eyes grow wide with concern. As he speaks Minghao isn’t sure they will believe him, his words sounding increasingly ludicrous to his own ears yet no one interrupts him and he draws comfort from Wonwoo’s steady presence at his side. Vernon and Chan have sat up, suddenly much too quiet and Minghao drops his eyes on his last word, Wonwoo tightening his grip on his hand.

“It’s as we feared, then,” Joshua simply says and a shudder goes through the room, Minghao sagging against Wonwoo’s frame.

“It’s even worse,” Minghao says, voice strained, “there’s nothing we can do to save him, is there?”

“I don’t know,” Joshua says and the words sink like stones in Minghao’s guts. He hadn’t realized how much he had counted on Joshua to make everything better, to reassure him that he wouldn’t have to witness someone else wither and die, someone he barely knew yet had come to value all the same, if only for the semblance of life he had brought to Jihoon’s faded being. Joshua isn’t done, however. He lifts his gaze, looking beyond Minghao, beyond Wonwoo towards the office’s door.

“He might, though,” he says, jerking his chin. There’s a collective intake of breath as they turn their gazes towards the back of the room only to find Jihoon standing there, leaning against the wood, hands tucked behind his back. He has divested himself of the sweater Chan had made him wear, his robes falling about his small frame, belt knotted tight on his chest. His gaze is dark, unreadable, the sharp line of his jaw held firm.

“How much did you hear?” Joshua asks him in a steady voice and Jihoon shifts, gaze falling to Joshua’s tranquil face.

“Enough,” Jihoon says without moving from his place against the wall. Something shifts in the air of the room, then. When Minghao looks there are shadows drifting from the corners, coming to twine around Jeonghan who jolts, darker strands bearing the smell of rain drifting along the floor to lose themselves in Jihoon’s robes. He’s angry, Minghao realizes with a start, angry and sad, a sadness seeping out of him in somber waves. And Minghao knows the shape of this anger, knows its smell, its dark taste on his tongue. So much undeserved pain, so much unanswered questions, so much suffering without reason. It’s unfair, unbearably so, and Minghao watches as Jihoon straightens, as he brushes back dark hair from his brow.

“Is there anything you can do?” Joshua is prompting, and the smile Jihoon offers him is glacial.

“Yes,” he says, looking down at his fingers where darkness is coiling like a snake. “This time there is.”

“What?” Jeonghan asks then, a little too eagerly, Jihoon’s gaze snapping to him with an amused glint.

“I am not sure. I need time I don’t have. But I have an idea.”

The ensuing silence is an invitation for Jihoon to speak and he sighs, letting himself slide to the floor where he gathers his robes around him, languorous shadows washing over his being. It’s to Jeonghan that he speaks but it’s the shadows he watches, fanning the fingers of a slender hand where a dark smoke curls. Those are different than the ones clinging to Jeonghan, Minghao notes as Jihoon speaks, those are darker, something sinister about them as they drift up through the floor and Minghao takes a step back, sticking closer to Wonwoo.

“Do you know the story of the dioscuri?” Jihoon asks in a soft, absent voice, barely registering the shakes of their heads as he continues. “They were two brothers, twins born from different fathers. One was the son of Zeus, and was immortal. The other was the son of a human king, and bore his mortality. When he was fatally wounded, Zeus offered his son a choice. Either spent eternity on Olympus, or share his immortality with his brother, thus dividing their time between Hades, the underworld, and Olympus. Heaven.”

“He chose the latter,” Vernon speaks in a whisper, Jihoon’s gaze falling to him, a softness in his smile that didn’t use to be, Vernon’s breath caught in his chest as he leans against Chan’s side.

“Of course he did,” Jihoon tells him, hands falling to the folds of his robes. “No heaven is worth losing the ones you love. No hell is unbearable if you brave it together.”

A silence follows his words, Minghao’s gaze falling back to Joshua, lost in thoughts behind the desk. They have already lived through too many of these moments where too much hangs in the balance, where each words spoken aloud might change the course of things. And he’s tired, Minghao realizes, so tired; there’s a hopeless kind of grief lodged in his chest, a choked sob stuck in his throat – yet again the task is daunting, yet again he can see the worry, the fear on the faces of those he loves.

“Is it even possible?” Joshua asks slowly, gaze steady on Jihoon and Minghao knows then that the decision has already been made, that they were always going to do it, whatever it is, even before Joshua asked the question, that this was always going to happen, whatever the answer may be.

“For me, it should be,” Jihoon says, tilting his head, a faraway mist clouding his eyes. “But I will need help.”

“We’ll do–”

“Not from you lot,” Jihoon interrupts Joshua, whose next words die on his lips. “From him,” he continues, jerking his chin towards Chan who has folded against Vernon, their arms linked together.

“Me?” Chan croaks, eyes wide, and a smile makes its way to Jihoon’s lips.

“Magic has no effect on you,” Jihoon says simply. “Not anymore, not with what happened to you. Thus you can hold them.”

“Hold what?” Chan asks, worry eating at his words, gaze flitting helplessly from one face to the other.

“The shadows,” Jihoon answers him and Minghao knows from the cold edge of his words that he is not talking about Jeonghan’s shadows, that he is not talking of any of the house dwellers. For a second it seems the smoke serpent Jihoon holds in his hand solidifies, the glint of the darkest metal swallowing the dim light of the room.

“There are others,” Minghao says in a breath, Jihoon’s gaze snapping to him.

“There are. And you,” he adds, pointing to Wonwoo, “you know them well.”

There’s a beat of silence before Minghao feels Wonwoo strain under the fingers holding his hand.

“No,” he says and his voice is unyielding, grim stare fixed on Jihoon, pinning him there against the door but Jihoon doesn’t flinch, rising to his feet in a slow, graceful gesture, the shadows falling from his hands like water.

“They cannot harm him,” he says, placating. “Not anymore.”

“No,” Wonwoo repeats and when Minghao looks his jaw is tight, his brow furrowed. He grips his hand almost too harshly and Minghao feels like he is holding him back, that were he to let go Wonwoo would pounce, smother Jihoon under his weight until no more words could get out. The air has turned heavy, too heavy to breath.

“You can’t do that to him,” Wonwoo says, the distress in his voice overriding his ire. And Minghao remembers a darkness darker that black slithering between his ribs, squeezing his lungs. He remembers the smell of decay, the taste of death upon his lips; remembers a serpentine shape molded by a dismal void, one that devours all.He remembers Wonwoo, pale and half gone, mind breaking, pleading for rest, for release, for death.

Minghao rises his gaze to Jihoon and the same knowledge is written on his features, something like compassion, like understanding in his dark eyes as he looks at Wonwoo, at the clenched fist at his side, at the strain in his jaw. He knows, too, of course he does, he had watched the shadows rip into Joshua’s flesh as he had offered himself in exchange for Wonwoo’s sake, and he had stopped it, had cradled them to himself and sent Joshua back, back to them whole.

 _There is nothing he cannot do_ , Minghao realizes then and he takes a step back, tugging Wonwoo with him. The realization comes with a kind of awe akin to fear blooming deep in his belly. It had been so easy to forget who Jihoon really was, to dress him in soft sweaters and overlook the true power within him, contained by the boundaries of his dead flesh, hidden under tentative smiles and a kinship Minghao had started to feel as they had sat together, as Jihoon’s quiet voice had traced the shapes of a hidden knowledge Minghao had been eager to learn. He had forgotten about the runes under the folds of Jihoon’s robes, had forgotten about the old voice echoing in dreams, had forgotten that the being before him was not entirely human, was something else, something more.

“Can someone tell me what we are talking about? What cannot he do to me?” Chan chirps and his eyes are wide when they turn to him, wide with worry, Vernon half shielding him with his body as if he dreaded an attack.

“You can give me a power that I need,” Jihoon says simply, “an old, raw power. Through you I could hold it. Through you I could use it.”

“There’s a ‘but’ somewhere in there, right? Is it evil?”

“Yes,” Wonwoo says at the same time as Jihoon says no. Chan looks worriedly between the two of them and the look Jihoon and Wonwoo exchange has Minghao tug further on Wonwoo’s hand so that he steps back, his features set in a scowl.

“It is beyond good and evil,” Jihoon continues, gaze falling from Wonwoo to Chan. “It is something else now.”

“That’s not reassuring,” Chan says, fidgeting, glancing nervously at Vernon who glances back with the same unease. “But I feel like I owe you. So I will do it.”

There’s a sharp intake of breath from Wonwoo, who steps closer to Chan, reaching out to him almost despairingly.

“You don’t even know what he’s asking of you.”

“It doesn’t really matter, though. He brought Vernon back, and I – I can help do the same for him now.”

Minghao watches Chan, the tight line of his mouth, the unwavering strength of his gaze and this is not only out of indebtedness, he knows then; there is something else there – compassion, knowledge, kinship even. There is a child within Chan’s mind he could never part from, a child with blue lips and a stilled heart, lungs full of seawater, kelp and sand trailing his every step. Each beat of Vernon’s heart is owed, each breath that he takes is stolen from death. He should have remained at the bottom of the sea, unchanged and ageless as Chan grew and aged and died in turn, wondering what could have been, mourning what had been lost.

And Chan knows, just as the pale hands of the dead reach out to him sometimes, when Vernon’s falling asleep beside him, he knows what Jihoon must see as he looks at Mingyu’s perfect face. He too is haunted, he too wishes to steal what cannot be stolen, salvage what he cannot bear to lose. And so Minghao takes a step forward, shifting his hand to link his fingers with Wonwoo and he hopes that he will understand, he hopes that he will forgive him.

“I will help you prepare,” he tells Jihoon, “I will give you all that you need.”

Jihoon bows to him silently and for a second it seems there’s a ripple in time, something that goes through the house like a wave to settle around them. Jihoon straightens and Minghao understands, then; the thrum flowing through the house, that humming he feels like electricity at his fingertips, straining toward him like sentient vines, like branches, like roots – the tree has always been there, the tree and its strange magic, the tree and the roots that burrowed into Jihoon’s flesh to feed off him, to become him just as he became it. And it is finding them again, it is finding him again; the house cradles them in its bowels like so much treasures to cherish, lending them its strength, its protection. And in that moment Minghao knows, he was always meant to be there, he was always meant for these people, just as they were meant for him.

**5.**

“Next time I try to be all noble and shit,” Chan is saying, gaze fixed where Wonwoo is writing complicated characters in red ink on yellow paper, “can you knock me out?”

Opposite him Vernon snorts, cheek pressed against the hand he uses to hold his chin up as if his head weighted a ton.

“It was kinda hot, though,” he drawls, and Chan makes a face at him as the tip of his ears redden.

“You made your bed now lie in it,” Wonwoo deadpans as he finishes with a slip of yellow paper only to start on the next one. He had been writing talismans for the better part of the morning under Chan’s watchful gaze, Minghao seated next to him busying himself by crushing dried leaves in a mortar. Sometimes the quiet, rhythmic thumps of the pestle are the only sounds to be heard. Sometimes Chan grows bored of Wonwoo’s seething silence, of Minghao’s contrite one, and he needles them into conversation under the morose gaze of Vernon, who joined them only because he had nothing better to do.

“Do I really need all this?” Chan asks, gesturing vaguely to the growing pile of yellow talismans.

“Yes,” is Wonwoo’s curt answer, but a sharp glance from Minghao has him elaborating. “What you thoughtlessly agreed to do is dangerous. So you need them for protection.”

“Aw,” Chan coos, “you’re worried about me.”

“You should be worried too,” Wonwoo snaps, pointing a finger at him Chan almost grabs on a wild impulse before Wonwoo retracts it.

“I’m still not entirely sure what I agreed to do, though,” Chan mumbles instead and Minghao snorts, disguising it as a cough as he fills a small white pouch with the powdered leaves. Wonwoo rolls his eyes at them both, Minghao sending him an apologetic glance before turning back to his work.

“Is that for me too?” Chan asks and Minghao shakes his head, tying the pouch closed and detaching new leaves from the dried flowers and ferns he has set in front of him. Off under the pestle they go, and there is something vaguely hypnotic in watching Minghao work; the unfailing regularity of his gestures, the sound of the dry leaves crushed under the pestle, the smell of the flowers.

“It’s for Mingyu,” Minghao says and the name draws a wistful sigh from Chan’s chest as he pillows his cheek on his crossed arms. They had showed him the picture, the one of Mingyu sat there in that army truck, surrounded by young faces long gone. It had been too strange to see him like this, a vertigo that had taken hold of Chan’s mind and had barely ebbed since. There were some things too hard to fathom, some things too full of grief, a grief heavy as water, thick as clay, one that pulled you down towards fearful depths Chan wished to avoid. And so he keeps his gaze on Minghao’s hands, fills his mind with idle chatter yet it is still there, a weight looming over his shoulders, pressing between his ribs.

And he wasn’t the only one to feel it, Chan was sure. Something had filled the house, something that had poured outside of Minghao’s office where the decision had been made. It was the worry carried in Wonwoo’s gaze, the exhaustion in Minghao’s face, the quiet restrain of Jeonghan; it was echoing in Joshua’s footsteps down the stairs to the reserve and in Vernon’s quiet voice whispering in the night. The house itself seemed to be waiting, holding its breath; the moving shadows Chan used to spy at every corner had disappeared, hidden under floorboards and crawlspaces, and Jeonghan had dimmed with them it seemed, his bright eyes darkened, his face paled.

 _T here are others_ , Minghao had said, words that had hardened Wonwoo’s face to the mask he wore now, mouth set in a tight line, brows furrowed as he works, something dark swimming in his haunting eyes.

“What are they?” Chan asks then, Minghao’s gaze falling to him. “The other shadows, the ones Jihoon wants, what are they?”

Chan watches as Wonwoo’s hands freeze over the yellow paper, as he stiffens for a second before putting down his brush of red ink. He stares at the talisman before him as if it would answer in his stead, and when Minghao rests a hand on top of Wonwoo’s fingers, squeezing lightly, Chan knows then that this is part of that story he never heard, the one that seems to link every inhabitants of the house, the one that pulled a weary veil over them all.

“It’s a long story,” Wonwoo starts and Chan exchanges a glance with Vernon who perks up. They remain silent, as if the tiniest sound could break the spell that seems to have taken hold of Wonwoo as he stares at Minghao’s hand atop his own, gaze lost, a yet unknown sorrow settling in grooves around his eyes and mouth. And then it passes like a cloud before the sun, Wonwoo taking up his ink brush again, writing lightly on the paper yet he doesn’t remove his left hand from Minghao’s grip, yet his writing has slowed to an almost languid pace, gaze following the path of red ink he traces and his voice is quiet when his speaks again, Chan straining to hear him.

“But it seems that you should hear it, now, if you are to welcome my burden as your own.”

They let him speak. After a while it seems that even if Wonwoo wished to stop, the words would keep pouring on their own. Minghao has taken up his pestle, the soft sounds of the mortar mixing in with the rhythm of Wonwoo’s voice and Chan had hoped for another story, even as he had known, watching the ache clinging to each of them, that it wouldn’t be a happy one. And he understands, now. He understands the soft shadows clinging to Jeonghan, he understands the grief carried in each of Joshua’s breath; he understands the exhaustion he can see in Wonwoo’s face, sometimes, understands the way Minghao desperately cares for each of them. He understands why helping Jihoon had seemed like an evidence, despite all that it would entail. And the fear that Chan feels is nothing, then, nothing against all that sorrow, all that grief.

All that love, too, one so deep it carried them through death and Chan wonders if he could ever feel the same, if there will ever be enough inside of him for this kind of feeling to grow, if there will ever be enough of him to love just as much. And he looks up, then, stares straight at Vernon’s face and he realizes that he already does feel it, that it is already there, flowing warm and sweet between his ribs, echoing in each beat of his heart, in each breath from his lungs. He carried this within him for so long he had forgotten its presence yet it is there, something sacred he finds in Vernon’s gaze, in the simple miracle of his presence and Chan extends his hand for him to take, relishing in the warmth flowing from his fingertips, in the feel of his touch, the smoothness of his skin.

Chan knows then that this is something worth protecting, in himself and in others, despite the fear, despite the shadows waiting for him, the ones that destroyed Wonwoo’s mind, that rendered Joshua’s flesh; the ones Jihoon cradled to himself and wished to appease. And so Chan forces a smile to his lips, one tinted with too much sadness, too much sorrow for those who have come and suffered before him. He turns to Wonwoo, gaze drifting to the pile of yellow talismans and they seem so quaint, so trivial, yet Chan knows now whence their magic comes – that same place, that same feeling that pushed him to agree, to go willingly into the darkness they need him to tread. And so he knows, too, the power they have, the pure will Wonwoo bestowed upon them.

“It’s gonna be alright,” Chan says, voice too close to a whisper yet Wonwoo smiles despite himself, something small and unsure Chan tucks away.

“I know it will,” Wonwoo answers, turning to the talisman before him, painting the last letter in the bright red ink. Chan wonders if they are trying to convince themselves, wonders whatever they will do, if it was to go wrong, if the darkness was to devour him just as it did Wonwoo. Though he doesn’t want to turn back, and he looks up in Vernon’s eyes, finding there a wistful resignation, a quiet fear Chan doesn’t know how to appease. Yet Vernon says nothing, nothing to hold him back, to change his mind. He must know, too, that this must be done, and the grip on his hand tightens; something to ground, something to hold and to keep.

  
  


**6.**

Mingyu asks for three days. They give him a week. Jihoon wonders if it’s a small mercy, that he doesn’t seem to have any attach, that he seems to have gone through life unmoored, a ship tossed at sea without any harbor to go back to. Jihoon wonders what kind of lies he will spin for the ones he leaves behind, few as they may be. He doesn’t ask, though, when Mingyu returns to the shop with a face drained of colors, the glint in his eyes replaced by a dismal hollow. Yet Mingyu still folds against Jihoon as if nothing was happening, still smiles his handsome smiles, still whispers his quiet words in that adored voice that twines around Jihoon’s cold flesh, pours warmth in his stilled heart until it feels like it might beat again.

But death hovers near, Jihoon knows, it’s settling in the lines of Mingyu’s face, in the marrow of his bones, in the beats of his heart. He’s fading as days go by, skin taught on sharp bones and Jihoon knows what he must find when he closes his eyes; the grave is calling him back, pulling at the threads of his life, asking for what is owed. He dreams, Mingyu tells him. Not the dreams he used to have, the ones full of that wistful longing, of that deep sorrow the morning saw spilled in burning tears. Those dreams are quiet. Restful. He is under the earth, he says, buried deep, deeper still, under silence and a darkness he has no words for.

“It isn’t so bad,” Mingyu says as Jihoon’s face contorts into something grave. “The air is dry and sweet, and you are here, too. I listen to your heartbeat, I feel your breath on my skin and your hand in mine is warm. It seems we are waiting, yet time doesn’t seem to pass. It is restful. I don’t mind it.”

The tree is in the dream, too, evergreen leaves swaying softly in a breeze of whispered voices, shadows clinging to its bark. There is a storm brewing over the mountains in the distance yet it never breaks and the earth remains dry, dust and ashes carried in the wind.

“It is peaceful,” Mingyu says, “and I’m so tired nowadays.”

Jihoon only nods, for there is nothing to say. He doesn’t know what Mingyu is seeing, he doesn’t know the meaning of it. And so as Mingyu reclines on their makeshift bed in the library, Jihoon takes up an ink brush he dips in the darkest black he could find, and traces shapes on Mingyu’s bare skin. He starts at the back of his hand, twining the runes like vines at the turn of his wrist, up a slender arm. They mirror the ones marring Jihoon’s own skin; a tether, a bond, a hold. Yet they are sharper, their shape familiar like his own face under his hand. He draws them over Mingyu’s naked ribs as he shivers, down to the dip of his navel, to the jut of his hipbones where Jihoon leaves a kiss, too, a soft touch of his lips.

Jihoon follows the lines of Mingyu’s body, imprinting in his mind each curve and each edge, each scar and each freckle. The silence in the room feels like a held breath, soft shadows pooling at Jihoon’s feet, tangling in Mingyu’s hair as he closes his eyes, his breaths low and even. Jihoon traces the shape of the runes painted on the smooth skin of Mingyu’s thighs with soft fingers, bends to mouth at them as Mingyu sighs, shifting on the bed. Slow, slow and languid, and Jihoon picks up his brush to write over Mingyu’s abdomen, bent so close to the skin his hair caresses it, Mingyu lifting a hand to tangle it there, pulling slightly when he wants a kiss and Jihoon yields, abandons himself to Mingyu’s touch, to the feel of his lips against his own, to the warmth of his bare skin under his hands.

The light has shifted when Jihoon paints the last rune over Mingyu’s ankle. He doesn’t need to look to know his work is perfect, he can feel the magic linking each of the runes, a soft hum in the air, a new kind of warmth radiating from Mingyu’s skin. Mingyu sits up, looking down at his hands, his arms, at the net of black ink covering his body whole. Jihoon picks up the robes Wonwoo left at the foot of the bed – an old _hanbok_ , one that Wonwoo used to wear, the fabric heavy under Jihoon’s hands, heavy with a magic of Wonwoo’s own. Minghao has sewn amulets in every folds, pouches of white linen filled with crushed herbs, daffodils and hyssop and purple mallows. Rebirth and sacrifice and love, and Jihoon runs a hand over the fabric before passing it to Mingyu who dresses slowly, Jihoon adjusting the folds over his tall frame, tying the belt on his chest.

He shouldn’t look so beautiful, Jihoon thinks; yet he always did, even as death had nestled in his bones, even as the disease had spread its blackened rot over his perfect skin. Mingyu had remained unchanged in Jihoon’s eyes, pure and unmarred and the love Jihoon had felt for him had never wavered in spite of the horrors, not then, not now. Mingyu smiles at him as if he knows which thoughts runs through his mind and Jihoon rises on tiptoes to kiss him again. Each kiss is closer to the last one, each touch imbues itself of the kind of urgency that used to color their every moments when war was near, when death was nearer. Mingyu backs Jihoon against the wall, running fiery hands down his sides before he lifts him up, Jihoon locking his legs around Mingyu’s waist, tangling his hands in his hair as he kisses him, deep and longing.

It is a goodbye, Jihoon understands then; for all the confidence he had showed there is no way to know if this will ever work, if the magic will ever allow it. But he will ask, again and again, plead with all that he has, pay the highest price to that force that inhabits him, to the shadows that will watch over him; he will sit in the belly of death, side by side with the most precious thing. He will hold the crumbling bones, whisper to the deaf ears until they hear anew; he will wait, wait until the empty lungs breath the soul back to its wretched home.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow look at that it didn't take me three months to update!  
> Fair warning, there's a slightly gory bit during Jihoon's ritual. Let me know if you think I should or if there's some specific tags I should add, I'm not very good with those things. Thank you.

**1.**

Once again the library is decked in the colors of Wonwoo’s magic, red, blue, white cloths hanging from the shelves. Once again the smell of incense and the low light of burning candles fill the room, once again it seems that nothing exists beyond this place, the sounds of the house reduced to nothing, the world outside the window quieted to nonexistence.

Chan stands at the threshold, the hem of the too-long _hanbok_ Wonwoo had him wear pooling around his feet. _It was mine_ , Wonwoo had said as he had helped him dress, pinning the yellow talismans to each folds, tying a string of them around Chan’s neck. _It will protect you, too,_ he had said. _At least I hope so_. But there is nothing to feel if Chan closes his eyes, none of that low hum, of that current he used to feel sometimes, before Minghao’s rune burnt itself into his flesh. Yet the talismans, the robes still bring him comfort – they are the testimonies of Wonwoo’s care, his will made tangible and maybe this is enough, maybe it doesn’t matter if Chan cannot feel the magic. If maybe there is nothing to feel in the first place.

“We’re almost ready,” comes a voice from inside the room and Chan lifts his gaze to Joshua, who’s kneeling on the wooden floor. He has burnt a rune there, large and wide; when Wonwoo had seen it his hand had flown to his chest, right above his heart and Chan knows what rests there now. _Eihaz_ , the rune of the yew tree. Chan closes his eyes for a second, breathing in the heady smell of the burnt wood. Mixing with the incense it clouds his mind, bringing him closer to that place where shadows dwell. Joshua is alone in the room, dark hair falling over his eyes as he surveys his work, rubbing his fingers against the burnt wood. They come off blackened with soot and he rises his hand to Chan, beckoning him over.

Chan hesitates before gathering his robes to step in. He stops after crossing the threshold, looking back behind him to the dim corridor. He doesn’t know how changed he will be, when he crosses it back again. He doesn’t know if Mingyu will still be there, or if Jihoon will have failed. It feels like a door is closing. He is trapped there, now, trapped by the dim light of the candles and the smell of fire.

He sits beside Joshua without a word, the witch grabbing his chin with gentle fingers to lift his face towards the light, tracing a simple rune on each of Chan’s cheek with a sooty finger.

“I thought magic wasn’t supposed to work on me,” Chan says and his voice sounds too quiet, stuck there in his throat with the rest of his fears.

“This is not magic,” Joshua says, “it’s a warning.”

“For who?”

Joshua blinks, lifting his gaze from Chan’s cheeks to his eyes and there’s something stubborn there, something fierce Chan isn’t used to see.

“For the shadows. For the magic itself,” he says, rubbing his finger against the blackened wood once more to trace a last rune on Chan’s forehead.

“What does it say?”

“That they cannot take you. That you belong to us. That no harm done to you will remain unpunished.”

Chan closes his eyes, feeling Joshua’s finger trace sharp lines upon his brow. There is a sigh stuck in his chest, something halfway to a sob and he remembers, then, he remembers Minghao’s dark eyes alighting with righteous fury as he had stepped into the shop that night long ago, a bag on his shoulder filled with all that he had, all that he was. He remembers Wonwoo’s gentle smiles, how they had healed much more than his wrecked body, how they had showed him what a home should be.

“Is that what Wonwoo’s talismans are saying, too?” he asks in a quiet voice, Joshua’s hand falling from Chan’s face back into his own lap.

“They say this and more,” Joshua says as he looks upon the yellow strips of paper adorning Chan’s clothes. “He went a bit overboard, didn’t he?”

“I guess,” Chan says with a smile that betrays the warmth he feels blooming within him.

“You know,” Joshua picks up, thoughtful gaze alighting back on Chan’s face. “It is still time to back off, if you want to. No one is forcing you to go through with this.”

“I know,” Chan says, trying to keep the smile on his lips. “But it’s okay. I mean, I’m kinda scared shitless so it’s not okay-okay but I still want to do it.”

Joshua nods, scrutinizing Chan’s face and he must find what he’s looking for as he squeezes Chan’s shoulder, once, before getting up.

“We won’t be here. It will be only you, Mingyu, and Jihoon. You must remain seated where Jihoon will tell you to sit, you must do exactly all that he says. And you must tell him, too, if something is wrong.”

“Will it be painful?” Chan asks and Joshua’s expression wavers, his mouth settling in a tight line.

“I don’t know,” he says, “I’ve never done anything like it. For Wonwoo, it wasn’t – it wasn’t, really, not physically, but his mind…”

“I know,” Chan interrupts, “he told me.”

“He told you,” Joshua repeats, “and you still want to do this?”

Chan nods and Joshua smiles, kneeling back before him and for a second it seems that Joshua will hug him yet he remains where he is, only grabbing Chan’s hand to squeeze it.

“Thank you,” he says, and it seems the words are too feeble for the intensity of the feelings swirling in Joshua’s eyes. “He’s all yours,” he adds as he gets up, Chan turning towards the door where Vernon is standing, gazing between him and Joshua.

As Joshua disappears down the corridors Vernon comes to sit next to Chan and he’s the one who hugs him, crushing him to his chest in a rustle of cloth and paper. Chan rests his arms around his waist, tucking him closer, feeling his heart beat against his own, his breath fan against his neck.

“I don’t even know what to say,” Vernon whispers against his skin, “they told me I couldn’t be here with you, that we had to wait. They told me it will be alright, but they can’t know that.”

“I do,” Chan says, tightening his hold on Vernon, “it will be fine.”

“How can you be so sure?”

Chan leans back so that Vernon can see his face, a smile on his lips.

“Cause you’ll be waiting for me, and no demon shadow will keep me from you.”

Chan’s grin grows while Vernon’s face shrivels as if he bit into a lemon, and he punches Chan in the arm, breaking his hold.

“This was so goddamn corny I hope the shadows possess you and make you actually suave.”

“Aw, you make my heart bleed.”

Vernon laughs, Chan leaning in to seal it with a kiss that Vernon deepens, resting his hands at the back of Chan’s neck, tangling his fingers in his hair.

“I love you,” he says when they part, “so don’t die. I’ll come get your soul anyway.”

“That you can actually do that for real is both hot, terrifying, and slightly comforting.”

“That’s three things,” Vernon says, pecking Chan’s lips who draws him into a kiss again, sliding his hands down his sides.

“I only just finished high school, have some mercy on me.”

“You know you should be able to count by then,” Vernon laughs as Chan’s mouth at his jaw, his neck, his collarbone. “And like, read and write. You know how to read, right?”

“I know how to read you,” Chan says and Vernon shrieks, hitting him on the shoulder again and Chan takes and takes and hoards it all under his heart, each laugh and each kiss and each word, each glint of Vernon’s eyes and each quirk of his mouth – the way he feels under his hands, the way the candlelight warms his skin to gold, the way his hair falls in front of his eyes, threads like water between Chan’s fingers.

“I love you too,” he says then, a warm impulse from his chest, “I really do.”

“I know,” Vernon says, kissing the words from his lips and when they part Vernon gasps, a blush rising to his cheeks.

Chan follows his line of sight towards the door and he had almost forgotten, he had, that looming weight pushed back far, far below his ribs. Yet Jihoon is standing at the threshold, his old robes gathered about him, face carefully blank. Mingyu’s next to him, pale, dark eyes watching from pits of exhaustion, shining with a feverish light. It hits Chan, then, how much he has changed from that first day where he stepped into the little kitchen – his grace now ravaged, the hard, handsome curve of his lips pulled taught, the high cheekbones piercing his skin. Next to him it’s Jihoon who seems alive, despite the cold of his flesh, despite the silence of his heart.

There is no doubts, then, no more hesitation in Chan’s mind. He turns back to Vernon, takes both of his hands in his, their warm touch joining the rest of his secret hoard and he smiles at him, something he hopes doesn’t feel too much like a goodbye.

“It’s okay,” he tells him, “I’m ready.”

Vernon nods, kissing him one last time; slow, unhurried, taking in all that he can.

“We could have waited,” Jihoon says, head tilted, once Vernon has passed him by to disappear down the corridor, Chan’s gaze following him out of the room.

“It’s okay,” Chan tells him. “It’s true, I am ready.”

Jihoon nods, stepping fully into the room, Mingyu following him close. He closes the door then, and Chan’s breath catches in his chest. All his fears rise with the simple gesture, clawing at his lungs; he watches as Jihoon moves closer, kneeling a few feet from him, taking care to touch the rune burnt into the floorboards. Jihoon gestures for Mingyu to sit at the top of the rune, where Joshua had first started to work with the blowtorch. Mingyu sinks to the floor like a stone, gathering his tall limbs and he seems small like this, too small; in Chan’s mind it’s another Mingyu that he sees, one huddled at the back of a truck, looking back with the stare of a dead man.

“You mustn’t move,” Jihoon tells him in a whisper and Chan nods as Jihoon leans towards him, rearranging his limbs with the touch of a cold hand. He has him facing Mingyu, the rune spanning the distance between them, linking their bodies. Mingyu offers him a broken smile, one Chan returns with hesitation as he feels Jihoon moving next to him, stepping back and forth, hands fleeting over his hair, his shoulders, his back. He’s whispering, words Chan doesn’t quite catch, words he wouldn’t understand even if he did.

“Are we starting now?” Chan asks tentatively, Jihoon responding after a while, once his strange song has died down.

“We will once you close your eyes.”

Chan nods, swallowing with difficulty, his throat dry, his mouth full of cotton. He looks back at Mingyu seated there in front of him, at the table of offerings behind him, at the lighted candles and the batons of incense, serpents of smoke wafting from their burning tips, filling the air with the scent of sandalwood. He takes a deep breath, forcing air into his constricted lungs, joins his hands together and there is nothing more to do, he knows, there is no stalling anymore. Jihoon is waiting and the room waits with him it seems, a soft silence draping over them, flowing like a breeze between Chan’s ribs, something numinous riding on its tail, a fourth presence circling their tense bodies. The shadows, maybe, or the magic itself, gathering there at the beckoning of Jihoon’s song, of the rune, of the candlelight.

And so Chan releases the breath from his lungs, and closes his eyes.

  
  


**2.**

“Do we really need to be this far away?” Vernon asks as Joshua hands him another pillow to put on the floor. “Are they gonna explode or something?”

Minghao snickers, sitting down between the shelves of the little shop where they have gathered, stacking pillows and blankets to make the space more comfortable. Wonwoo sits next to him, stretching his legs in front of him, almost tripping Jeonghan who glares at him before finding his place at Joshua’s side.

“No one will explode,” Joshua is saying, “there will just be a lot of magic in the same place. And we don’t want to interfere with it.”

“Don’t we?” Vernon asks, the only one still standing. He’s jittery, worry turning him restless, and the strangeness of the shop they closed down does nothing to assuage him. It seems that the shadows move each time he turns his head, that the shelves grow taller when he’s not looking. He himself feels unmoored, not quite fitting in his own body, his hands clammy at his sides.

“Sit down, Vernon,” Jeonghan is saying in his even voice and Vernon does, plopping down right where he stood, Wonwoo’s foot nudging him in the knee. “It’s gonna be fine,” Jeonghan continues, “it has to be.”

There’s a stubbornness to his tone, one that is reflected in the set of Joshua’s mouth, in Minghao’s downcast eyes. Vernon turns to Wonwoo, the only one here who really knows what they felt like, those shadows Jihoon wants to call, yet the words won’t cross his lips; he doesn’t really want to hear it, he realizes, he doesn’t really want to know what it is Chan will go through. Wonwoo had remained evasive as he had recounted his story that day in the kitchen. He had painted it in broad strokes, hidden the worst under hesitant words and too many detours. And now Vernon is left to wonder, seated there under wooden rafters, the estranged surroundings of the shop bearing down on him.

“So we just wait?” he says, bouncing his leg. There is electricity rising in the air, a current he is sure everyone can feel, something that raises the hair on his nape like static. He sees Jeonghan exchange a glance with Joshua, Minghao biting at his lower lip. He feels Wonwoo shift next to him, bringing his legs back against his chest as he rests his head on the shelf behind him, his gaze lost, worry draining the colors from his face.

“There is nothing more we could have done, right?” Vernon persists too quietly, the question remaining unanswered as the dim light of the waning afternoon seems to dim further, as shadows grow from hidden corners, as a chill go through them. They all feel it, they all know. It has started. Jihoon is calling the shadows.

“There is something I want to try,” Jeonghan whispers then and when Vernon looks he’s staring at his own hand, a wisp of black smoke curling around his fingers. There are more, rising from the floorboards, tangling around his ankles, his shoulders, his hair.

“What?” Joshua asks and Jeonghan’s gaze snaps to him, something alight in their depths Vernon had yet to see.

“You feel it too, right? The magic. It’s all around.”

Joshua nods slowly, and something settles in his face as if he knows, as if he understands.

“I feel like it might work,” Jeonghan continues, “I feel like if it’s now, it might work again.”

“What might work?” Vernon asks and Jeonghan turns to him to answer, just as the lights go dark with a sharp noise.

“Shit,” Minghao’s voice rings from his left, “anyone has a light?”

Vernon fumbles for his cellphone, turning on the torch app and Minghao’s face looks almost ghastly, emerging thus from the light, his brow furrowed, mouth set in a frown.

“There’s no point trying to get the power back,” Joshua is saying from somewhere to the right, Vernon angling his phone towards him. “Is there candles somewhere?”

“Of course there is,” Minghao grumbles as he stands, “this is a hack magic shop, candles make up like, half of my sales.”

“Sometimes I wish you would be a bit ashamed,” Wonwoo says when Minghao comes back with an armful of black candles they arrange on the shelves, lighting them with a silver zippo engraved with a leaf pattern.

“Well, keep wishing my guy,” Minghao tells him as he sits back down, the yellow light of the candle warming his face, turning him from ghost back into man as Vernon shuts off his phone.

Minghao is not the only one to have moved, Jeonghan emerging from the darkness to join their circle of light, a small wooden box in his hands. The shadows still stick to him, faint whispers rising from their turmoil, and the darkness surrounding them seems alive with hidden shapes, distorted faces that disappear when Vernon looks to them. He shivers, even though the air feels warmer than it did, a faint smell of earth and rain wafting from the floorboards and something older, too, something of burnt wood and decay.

Jeonghan sets the box in the middle of their circle, shadows sticking to the object, darkening its wood, blurring its edges. Vernon shifts, sitting more comfortably, gaze turning to Jeonghan who stares down at the box. Behind him it seems that the wall of darkness has grown solid, ghastly hands pushing against the edges of their light and Vernon scoots further in, prickles at his back as if he was being watched and maybe he is, he thinks; the air is filling with faint whispers, slight songs faltering to silence, an electric current wafting upwards, upwards to the center of the house, to the library where they have scorched the rune that will bind all.

They fall silent, a silence it seems nothing could break as Jeonghan opens the box’s lid with careful hands, retrieving the deck of cards lying inside. Vernon has seen them already – Jeonghan would take them out sometimes, stare at them with that undecipherable sadness in his gaze before he would put them away. Yet they feel different this time, heavier, maybe, something solid clinging to them and as Jeonghan fans the deck over the floorboards, shadows swirling over each cards, it seems that the pictures are moving. Dark eyes following Jeonghan’s movements, a hand twitching on a sword, the leaves of a wand fluttering in an unfelt wind.

Jeonghan stacks the cards back together, shuffling the deck for what feels like an eternity and he’s getting reacquainted with it, Vernon understands as he watches Jeonghan flits his fingers over each cards, shadows curling over his wrists like bracelets of smoke; the magic is coming back to him, one he had lost, one that had deserted him. Time slows, it seems, or maybe hastens – Vernon isn’t sure the night had already fallen when they had started yet he can see the moon through the window, its sharp light swallowed by the breathing darkness bearing down on them, one only kept at bay by the frail flames of the candles. Vernon looks to each faces around him, to their eyes focused on Jeonghan’s hands; he listens to their quiet breaths, imagines the beats of their hearts and something numinous is blooming there, something sacred binding them together. And then, then Jeonghan draws the cards.

The first card he turns over bears a heart pierced by three swords, facing Jeonghan upside down. Vernon wants to ask, yet his lips remain sealed. And then, then he doesn’t need to anymore. There’s a soft wail coming from the darkness around them, a sob amongst the whispers, something that grips at his heart and wrings his flesh; Vernon wants to speak, pour this grief outside of himself yet he cannot, the words stuck in his throat, choking him. The tears in his eyes burn a path down his cheeks and this is an anguish like no other, a dismal sorrow taking up the shape of his being – something has been lost, something irreplaceable, something he could not bear to lose yet it lays in ashes at his feet and all the love in his heart burns him to cinders. There is nowhere to go from here, there is no way to withstand this pain, this loss. Vernon listens to the whimpering shadows, clenching his chest with trembling hands and this must cease, this must cease yet he shall die and maybe this is it, this is the way out – follow into the grave the one that went first and Vernon knows now what he is feeling; a pain that isn’t his own, a grief he borrowed. And he knows, too, that this grave offered no rest, that in this lowest deep a lower deep opened wide, and devoured him.

And then, as suddenly as it started, it stops. When Vernon looks down, Jeonghan has turned over the second card and he’s staring at a knight astride a pale horse, clutching a dark banner in its skeleton hand, the empty eyes of its skull staring out at a praying bishop before him. Death, and Vernon’s breath catches in his chest yet the wails have turned to songs amongst the whispering shadows, yet the hard exhaustion of his limbs has turned to a pleasant numbness, yet it seems that the candles burn brighter, the air dry and sweet around them. Something is coming, something he can barely make the shape of in the moving dark yet Vernon isn’t afraid – his heart settles, his breaths come easy and he’s waiting, waiting for it to wash over him, whatever it may bring.

When he looks up at Wonwoo next to him, at Minghao, Joshua, he can see the same feeling reflected in their faces, the same hope in their eyes. The shadows have settled over the cards, Jeonghan’s hand hovering over the last one, the one that will tell them what they want to know; they twine around his fingers, pressing whispers to their ears and finally, finally Jeonghan moves, slender fingers reaching for the last card.

  
  


**3.**

There is only Jihoon’s voice, in the darkness behind Chan’s eyes. A darkness that grows, that slithers between his ribs, seals the breath in his lungs and stills the beats of his heart. He’s cold, so cold, dismally so; bones nothing but shards of ice encased in the snow of his flesh. There is nothing here but Jihoon’s voice and so Chan listens, words washing over him, a song of grief, of loss, of regrets and fear. It’s calling, a lonely voice in the dark, calling to the sleepless thing that resides there, a monster of hate and sorrow, of desolation. It’s here, Chan knows, he can feel its abominable weight against his chest; it’s here and it listens, each word another thorn in its slumber and soon it will wake, soon it will rise to devour him, and Chan knows that he must let it.

There are hands taking his own, hands cold as the chill that holds him, cold as the death that hovers near. They are not empty, these hands; a current is flowing from them, chasing the blood from Chan’s veins, carrying in something dark, something old, something that knows. It’s taking his self apart, making space, space for the horror who’s rearing its monstrous head in the depths of his mind and Chan feels it growing, feels it espouse the shape of his being – it spills in his chest, in his lungs, in each of his limbs. And there is a voice, then, a voice whispering in his head and fear curls against his spine for this is not a voice for the living, these are not words meant to be heard.

His body is not his body anymore. His mind is not his mind. Chan opens his eyes but they are blind, Chan opens his mouth but his voice is sealed in his throat. There is nothing, beyond the darkness. Nothing but the dreary cold, nothing but the death that awaits them. Yet Jihoon is still holding his hands. Yet Jihoon is still singing, and so Chan listens, listens until the smell of rot replaces the sandalwood, until the taste of decay wets his lips, lips parting on words that aren’t his, words that ask, _what is it that you want?_

“Help, and power,” a voice answers, a voice that he used to know but Chan is laughing a crazed laugh, and his hands crush the ones that he holds yet they do not let go, and he wishes to hurt, and he wishes to wound, drown in his hate all that there is.

“I will make you see,” the voice that stole him is saying, and this time when he opens his eyes Chan sees, Chan sees Jihoon seated there upon the rune, holding his hands. And Chan pounces on him, and Chan bites his teeth into his flesh, renders the muscles, tastes the stale blood that won’t flow, not anymore, not ever again, and all drowns in darkness.

There is a grey light behind his eyelids. When he opens them, Jihoon is there with him, whole and unharmed. He is looking down at the river flowing at their feet, a river of dark, murky water reflecting the purple sky above them, one devoid of any cloud, one that never knew the sun. Chan lifts his head and there is a mountain range in the distance, flashes of thunder crowning its heights yet the storm remains far from the valley where they stand. Chan looks down at his hands, at the black veins he sees running up his arms, disappearing at the bend of his elbow. He wonders what will happen when they eventually reach his heart, and then he wonders nothing – it is someone else that stirs him, something else, and he goes to kneel by the river, plunging his hands in the icy water.

Chan cups his hands yet it is not water that he treads, not anymore – there is a skull looking back at him, polished smooth by the current, and ghastly hands reach for his own, clutching his wrists with wasted fingers stinging his flesh like claws. A whisper rises from the river, pleas and wails that reach them through the murky waters and Chan can see them now, hundreds of them, ghastly faces and gnarled hands reaching for him. For them, because Jihoon has knelt beside him, his stare lost to the waters, ashes and dust clinging to his robes and he almost looks like one of them, Chan thinks, he almost looks like the ghosts from the river.

“They are calling you,” the dreaded voice says with Chan’s mouth, “they want you back. They want you back with him, the one for whom you do all this.”

Jihoon treads the waters softly, dark strands of hair tangling in his fingers like kelp, faces reaching out for his touch.

“He will leave again, though.”

“And come back again.”

“Why?”

“He made a wish.”

A wry smile stretches Jihoon’s lips and he takes his hands out of the water, folding them in his lap. He does not look at Chan, at the darkness swirling in his once clear eyes.

“This isn’t what he wanted,” he says, his voice but a whisper.

“But this is what he got. What do you want?”

“I want to make another wish. I want to make a deal.”

“A deal with who?” The dark voice asks. “There is no one here.”

“There is them,” Jihoon says, gesturing to the river. “There is you. There is the magic.”

Chan tilts his head, and he can feel the creature’s turmoil within him, the strife it wages – under all that hate there is a curiosity, an interest, and something else, something too much like a nascent compassion that brings fear to this fearless being. And so Chan pushes a thought at the forefront of his mind, a simple feeling, a small plea. It has the shape of Vernon’s hand in his, the smell of Minghao’s kitchen, the color of Wonwoo’s talismans. It sounds like Joshua’s voice and Jeonghan’s laugh and Chan offers it all up, something like hope, something like love.

“Come,” the creature says, rising Chan’s body. They follow the riverbank, tripping over dry roots and the bones of small creatures. It is not entirely silent as Chan first thought. There is the sound of water lapping at the banks, whispers and sighs of dead souls rising in the mist. A low rumble, too, from far over the mountains, the rumble of a storm that won’t break. It smells like rain, like earth, despite the soil being ash and dust, cracked from a drought that won’t let up. Chan looks up and off in the distance there is a small pier, half collapsed in the river yet a row boat rocks at its side.

It seems too soon when they reach it, yet Chan wouldn’t be able to tell how long they have walked. He steps over half rotted wood planks to balance his weight in the boat as Jihoon follows, sitting himself at the prow. There is a small lantern there, one they do not light as Chan pushes the boat off the bank with an oar. It is all that oar is for it seems, the current taking the embarkation away from the bank down to the middle of the river where the mist closes over them, quieting every sound except for the soft lapping of the water. The fog is denser there, cold and wet, sinking into their clothes yet Chan barely feels it. He sits at the stern, watching flickers of light run over the smooth surface of the water, will-o-the-wisps disappearing into the mist.

“Where are we going?” Jihoon asks after a while, gaze fixed on the dark waters carrying them, on the empty eyes reflected below the surface, ghastly hands caressing their boat as they pass.

“Somewhere,” the creature says with Chan’s voice. “Somewhere where you can make you wish.”

“Will it be granted?”

“I do not know,” the creature says and it’s true, Chan knows – the shadow is him, now, and he is it.

“I did not think you would let me,” Jihoon continues, ripping his gaze away from the waters to stare at Chan. “I thought I would need to fight you.”

Chan looks back at him, the creature staring from behind his eyes. It swirls inside him, a vortex of fear and pain and rage, yet there is something else there, too, something lonely and suffering, something that yearns for the light it once knew. It’s to this that Chan desperately clings lest the darkness swallows all of him, and it’s this that governs the creature now, pushes it to see this through, to quiet the hate and still its instincts of cruelty.

“There is nothing to fight for,” the creature answers, “not anymore.”

“You are tired,” Jihoon realizes, “you want to rest.”

A cold smile stretches Chan’s lips, one that feels foreign on his own face and his gaze falls from Jihoon to the waters, to the faces he can see there; the creature was part of them once, floating down a river none could follow, at peace, at rest.

“You stopped me once,” the creature says in Chan’s voice, “you pulled me back and imprisoned me there under the earth where I seethed and endured and lamented my own fate.”

“Were you angry?”

“Angry? I am beyond anger,” the creature says and Chan feels it inside him, slick as oil, a black tide swallowing all. He looks down, peering under the collar of his robes and the black veins have crept up his arms, reached his shoulders to pour down his torso, a map of his upcoming doom. Chan wonders if Jihoon knows, if he will let the creature devour him in exchange for his wish.

“Once again you called me back,” the creature continues, “poured me down this body I cannot own, and thus I will bring you to the end.”

“You are curious,” Jihoon speaks absently, letting his hand touch the waters, peering into the unending mist.

“I am,” the creature says, “everyone is.”

And Chan looks down at the water, at the ravaged faces pressing there, their mouths opened on silent pleas, hair flowing like seaweed as their hands scrape the bottom of the boat, sounds lost in the current. They follow like seabirds trailing ships, trading whispers and avid hands, starved for the flicker of life carried there in the small boat, for the soft light under the purple sky. They want to know, too, how this will end. Thus they both go down the river of souls, wisps of mist clinging to their hair, a deathly chill nestling in their bones.

It seems an eternity before a dark shape arises from the mist, growing as the current brings them closer. A small island where the river forks, its soil pierced by a gaunt hand, broken fingers straining towards the sunless sky. The boat scrapes against the bank, and Chan lifts his head towards the shape looming at the center of the island as he disembarks, feet sinking in the mire with an irksome sound. It’s a tree, huge and ancient, wisps of mist hanging from its branches like veils and there are no leaves to cloth it, no birds to sing it their notes yet it is full of whispers, shadows clinging to its tortuous trunk, faces staring from the bark.

And there is fear, curling under Chan’s heart, a fear that does not belong to him and he understands what the creature sees – a prison, a grave, a sepulcher to be buried in and forgotten. It stirs under his skin in painful flares and Chan dreads what he would see, were he to look; the black veins, creeping ever closer to his heart and he spares a look to Jihoon, standing next to him, his face raised to the yew tree, lips slightly parted. The island is made of roots, huge and serpentine, old bones crushing underfoot as carrion beetles scuttle away from each step they take. It is a long way up, scraping their hands on hard bark and each drop of blood is swallowed, each breath is kissed away by a mist full of voices.

At the base of the tree there is a mound of bones, an empty barrow they stop at and Jihoon stares with a tight smile, brow furrowed over dark eyes.

“It all started because of this,” he says to no one, nudging the base of the mound with his foot, disturbing small bones that cascade along the slope.

“This brought the end,” the creature contravenes, kneeling near Joshua’s empty grave. “It started when you first saw him, the one that you love. Or earlier still, maybe, down in the steppes where a flea first had a taste of human blood.”

Jihoon tilts his head, staring up at the tree. Its shadow paints lines on his face and for a moment it seems he is made of bark himself, skin rough and hard, hair turning into so many leaves. And then it’s gone, Jihoon stepping forward, pressing a hand against the massive trunk as Chan watches.

“Go on,” Jihoon says simply, and pain explodes in Chan’s chest.

His hands are blackened when Chan looks down, a simmering darkness trailing smoke in the damp air. There’s whispers all around him, pressing voices screaming in his ears as he kneels by the base of the tree, plunging his hands into the earth, deep, deeper still until the broken nails of his fingers scrape at something smooth, smooth and cold and this is what he’s looking for, it is, and these hands that aren’t his anymore pull it from the earth, a skull that stares back at him with empty eyes until Jihoon takes it from him, setting it down on the miry earth. And he keeps at it, each cold bone pulled from a grave that is loath to give them up yet the earth is afraid, afraid of him, of the corruption he has become and it yields under its touch, shriveling away from him, from his darkness, from the howling winds that inhabit him.

And then, then there is nothing more to take and the corruption turns to Jihoon, Jihoon kneeling there by a skeleton whose skull he cradles to his chest, lovingly, unbearably so and his eyes are too full of sorrow, of guilt, of love, feelings the shadow has forgotten, feelings that blackened to cinders in his wretched being and go on, Jihoon had said, and so he does.

Jihoon doesn’t flinch, when the corruption plunges his hands into his chest. Darkened blood spills in clot over his robes as the shadow pulls his arms back, gripping a heart that has for too long ceased beating. He cradles it within the empty cage of the skeleton’s ribs, hands going back to grip at Jihoon’s body. Jihoon has slumped forward, feeble hands scrabbling at the hole in his chest; the shadow pulls them away as he renders his flesh, breaks the ribs, pulls them apart to claw at the lungs, at the stomach, the spleen and liver. Each find a place over the whitened bones, congealed blood feeding the earth and the whispers are more pressing now, bearing down on them like wind, a wrecked song Jihoon spoils with a sob that chokes him.

But his vocal cords are next and soon he is mute and blind, blunt nails scrabbling at his orbits and the shadow doesn’t wonder about the pain despite the mouth opening on a silent scream; he puts his fingers there, rips out the tongue to cloth the skull.

“It is done,” he says, and the body he inhabits feels too tight, his being pushing against the seams until it should break yet it does not; the heart keeps beating, the blood keeps flowing and the mind is still there, a wounded bird behind the ribs and the shadow knows; there is a rune burning on his borrowed flesh, there is an anchor calling him back.

Jihoon is inert, his body slumped forward into the ground yet the shadow knows that he still lives. This is just the beginning, after all, and the shadow bows to the earth, peering into the bloodied orbits of Jihoon’s wrecked face.

“I must go now,” he says, “you chose my vessel well. I cannot hold it for much longer.”

There is a spasm from Jihoon, something pathetic, something that almost elicit pity in the creature’s ashen heart yet it pulls back just as the pain in Chan’s chest becomes unbearable, breath stolen from his lungs and he falls, falls back into the earth, deeper still, down to the other side. Yet he takes a last image with him before his eyes close; Jihoon, Jihoon crawling over the bloodied earth, hand straining towards skeletal fingers he cannot see anymore.

  
  


**4.**

Mingyu opens his eyes on a purple sky, heavy branches marring its perfect expanse. There are curious whispers in his ears, tentative voices skirting the edge of his hearing and he listens quietly to the foreign words they weave – he feels them against his skin, touches soft as a breeze, light as the air filling his lungs and it feels like he hadn’t breathed for a century. He holds up a hand against the sky, fingers splayed wide and he watches the delicate bones move under his flesh. His hand is both familiar and foreign – there are calluses where the skin should be smooth, a raised scar at the turn of his wrist where he was never wounded. Yet maybe he was, and a memory rises, of swords clashing under the rain, of a single mistake, of a blade slicing into his flesh.

Mingyu shivers, letting his hand fall back upon his chest and he presses down, feeling the heart beating there, strong and steady, pulsing warm blood through his veins. His legs are numb, his body heavy as if slumber still held him and he struggles against its sluggish pull, pushing against the soft earth beneath him, eyes searching the mist for something, someone, but there is only the sky and the tree and the shadows in the branches and – and a slumped form, face bent to the earth, body broken in two, hand opened towards Mingyu as if he had wished to reach him before its last strength had left him.

“No,” Mingyu says, voice rough with disuse, scrambling to move, hands laboring the earth as he struggles towards the body and he holds its wasted face in his hands, blood seeping like tears from the bloodied orbits.

“What have you done?” Mingyu asks, despair clinging to his every words, “Jihoon, what have you done?”

And he cradles the broken body to his chest, this empty husk that used to hold the most precious being; he presses his hands against the open wounds as if he could relieve the pain they must have brought, as if he could mend the skin, weld the bones back together. Slick blood taints his fingers, dark and pungent as the despair that rises into him, spilling out of himself in broken wails. Around him the mist shivers, shadows falling from the branches, flowing up from the dark waters of the river below and Mingyu feels their ghastly hands upon him, pulling at his hair, jabbing his shoulders. The whispers have turned to laughter, to mocking cries of anguish and wisps of smoke curl over Jihoon’s body, pulling at his hair, his clothes, the shreds of his torn flesh.

“No!” Mingyu yells, holding Jihoon closer to his chest, swinging an arm out and it’s a sword that he’s holding, its weight in his hand familiar like something he had missed, the glint of the blade slashing through the mist, through the shadows, through the whispers and their echos.

His arm falls, the round pommel of the sword hitting the earth, his hand limp over the grip. He stares, stares at the bright blade, at his own hand that holds it, at the studded bracers covering his wrists and the blue robes that flow over his bent legs and it is too late, it is, Jihoon is weightless against him, inert, still as death and Mingyu buries his cries against his bloodied neck. He wishes the darkness behind his eyes would possess all of him, smother his agony in blissful oblivion, every thought extinguished, every feeling burnt to ashes. If this was the price of his life it was not worth it, and Mingyu’s hand finds Jihoon’s own, gripping the cold fingers, remembering how they would close over his, their touch soft, gentle despite the blaze it used to light on his skin. Nevermore will they trail upon his soul, nevermore will Jihoon’s voice rise, spelling devotion in soft whispers, nevermore will his eyes alight on Mingyu’s own, filled with a simple joy, a love plain and perfect.

There is nothing, anymore. Just the sound of his tears, their taste of sorrow. There is nothing, and then, then something changes. A soft pull, a gentle hum, something that rises from the mist. Tentative shadows darting close and away, murmurs at the edge of his hearing and Mingyu lifts his head, looks at the tendrils of ashen smoke curling over him, over Jihoon in his arms, pouring over his wounds, over the ruins of his flesh. Mingyu’s hand tightens over the grip of this sword yet he doesn’t lift his arm, doesn’t ward them off. There is something soothing in their strange voices, a warmth, a grounding weight that lifts off the worst of his sorrow, that heals this searing pain. It takes him too long to realize that it is hope, a hope contained in wafting shadows and whispered voices. _It is not over,_ they seem to say, _this is not the end. There is yet much to be done._

And so Mingyu rises to his feet, cradling Jihoon’s wrecked body against his chest, his tortured husk bearing no weight. He follows, follows the twisting shadows through the mist and they bring him to the tree, to its massive trunk and it seems there is nothing else beside this, the tree and the shadows and Jihoon in his arms. The sounds from the river have faded, the mist swelling until it encompasses all that there is, the world swallowed in ashen white. There is an alcove, carved out of the tree. A nook where Mingyu could crawl and he understands, then, he understands what must be done. His clothes stick to his skin, wet from Jihoon’s blood as he settles him into the hollow, slowly, delicately, as if he was made of crystal.

Jihoon’s head rests against the side of the tree, empty orbits staring out at Mingyu, his legs folded against his chest, hands limp at his sides. His frozen blood that would not flow now drips from his open wounds, wetting the dark humus of his seat, mixing in with the rotten leaves, the remnants of small animals, the moldy bark found there. An earthy smell of decay rises from the hollow and Mingyu kneels before it as in prayer, his hand on the pommel of his sword, his gaze bent to the earth. Shadows swirl around him, their voices curious, expectant, and the ones who had led him there settle over his shoulders, murmuring in his ears songs of grief and yearning. And so Mingyu waits, watching as a guardian, body still as the tree itself, gaze settled on Jihoon’s form.

It’s almost imperceptible, when it starts. Small, new roots growing out of the humus, a crimson tint to their tender bark and they twine over Jihoon’s feet, over his ankles, anchoring him there in the hollow. They grow higher, binding the rendered flesh, pouring within the cavity of his opened chest, knotting there like a new heart. Mingyu watches, the shadows growing darker around him, their murmurs more pressing and there are wisps trying to enter, pulling at the roots with a snarl in their voices and Mingyu stands then, sword flashing in the grey light as the smoke falls in shreds. It is a dance he had never forgotten; the weight of the sword in his hand, the placement of his feet, light upon the earth, his movements fluid as water. He does not know how long it lasts. There is no fatigue to be felt, here. No thirst and no hunger. Just him, Jihoon, and the tree and the shadows and the glint of his blade.

  
  


**5.**

There’s a scuttle, a sound near the stairs as if someone was falling. Jeonghan’s hand stills over the last card, Vernon’s head snapping towards the red curtains he cannot see in the dark, breath caught in his lungs. Something is creeping towards them, tripping over the floorboards; Joshua rises, his gaze cold as the fingers of his left hand bend into a complicated gesture. Wonwoo pulls on Vernon’s sleeve, tucking him behind himself as they remain crouched to the ground, searching the darkness for the source of the noise and it seems part of the dark is moving, a denser shadow, its weight bending it to the ground. Jeonghan has moved, too, standing by Minghao’s side, dark smoke curling over hands he has lifted before him.

The scuffling sound grows closer, Vernon’s breath sealed in his lungs and it’s fear, he knows, he feels it within him, pulling at every fiber of his being, telling him to shift, something quick and small that could easily hide, easily disappear into the dark yet he stays rooted in place, wide eyes staring at the shadow detaching from the dark. It has reached the edge of their light, their circle that seemed impenetrable yet the hand it rises easily breaches it, its skin rough, black as obsidian, and Joshua opens his mouth to utter a curse when the rest of the body follows, tumbling to the ground. Vernon yells, his knees hitting the floor as he rushes to the shadow’s side because it isn’t one, it’s Chan, it is, his face contorted in a painful grimace, hands clawing at his chest, pulling on the robes Wonwoo had dressed him in, ripping the talismans to pieces.

“Get it out,” he wheezes, tears pearling at the corners of his eyes, “it’s still there, it is, it’s–”

He chokes on a breath as Joshua pulls the robes open and the darkness has colored the skin of his chest, too, sinuous veins straining towards his heart. Chan writhes on the ground, clawing at his skin, at the darkness that dwells there.

“It cannot stay,” Joshua is whispering, “yet it doesn’t want to go.”

There’s a whimper and it takes Vernon too long to realize it’s coming from him. He has caged Chan’s hands in his, blood under their fingernails and Chan has found his gaze, eyes wide with pain and terror. _It’s okay_ , Vernon wants to tell him yet he doesn’t know if it’s a lie and he raises his gaze to Wonwoo, seeing his own horror reflected there in his dark eyes.

“Help him,” he says, “please,” and Wonwoo snaps out of his stupor, rising to his feet in a flurry of movements.

“We don’t have much time,” he says, and something passes through the others, a ripple as they look at each other, a quiet understanding blooming between them.

Minghao settles by Chan’s feet, both hands grabbing his ankles as he prevents his thrashing; furious whispers are falling from his lips, a guttural tongue Vernon does not understands taken up by Joshua kneeling at Chan’s head. His hands are joined, fingers bent in a curiously familiar gesture and Vernon jolts; he’s seen this shape already, inked upon Jihoon’s skin. A rune, and it must be what they are chanting, too, a song of old power and forgotten magic.

There’s the sound of bells, and when Vernon looks up Wonwoo is holding a set of tiger bells sewn to a red cloth. They look new, probably snatched from the shop’s shelves and Wonwoo spares a glance to Minghao. _They better work_ , he seems to say and Minghao shrugs helplessly, turning back to his song as Wonwoo takes up a new rhythm, feet lightly stomping the ground as he starts a slow dance, the bells jingling in his hands. They must work, they must; Chan is staring at him a s his thrashing settles, his hands in Vernon’s own grabbing back tightly – _do not let me go_ , he seems to say and Vernon shifts closer, bending over him, fingers threading through his. The sound of the bells twines seamlessly with Joshua and Minghao’s song, and Vernon watches as a serpent of smoke uncoils from Jeonghan’s hands, whispers filling the silences between the words, between each taken breath. And Jeonghan kneels at Chan’s side, a painfully compassionate smile on his lips as he strokes back Chan’s hair, leaving his hand there upon his brow.

“It’s going to be fine,” he says, Chan closing his eyes, sweat pearling along his temples. “It’s going to be okay, Chan. You’re with us.”

Jeonghan’s voice is sweet, yet the gaze he raises to Joshua is hard as steel. Joshua nods, his voice rising, as Minghao follows, the rhythm of the bells, of Wonwoo’s dance hitting harder, faster. Vernon can feel something then; the magic, maybe, pouring into the room, sharpening over Chan’s body and it seems that were he to move, the air would cut him. Jeonghan’s shadows rally, coming from each corner of the room, each nook where they had crawled and they pour over him, blurring his edges until it seems they are almost solid – Vernon had seen that already, too; the serpent in Jihoon’s hands, a dark metal swallowing the light, sharp enough to separate flesh from bones, to cut the invisible.

“Now,” Joshua grits from clenched teeth, his hands tense and trembling. Jeonghan nods, Jeonghan flicks his wrist, and all that power, all that will made true rushes through Chan’s body, sinking within each pore of his skin, pouring in his mouth, in his eyes. There’s a strangled sound, an aborted cry as Chan arches off the floor, his grip on Vernon’s hand almost unbearably painful and there’s a thousand voices threading through his own, a thousand anguished cries as the shadows rush into him, scraping his bones, wringing his flesh for what is inside it, pulling it out of himself with claws of smoke. It seems Chan will break in two, each of his limbs impossibly taut, his skin bruising under the naked eye and tears spill from Vernon’s eyes as he lets him crush his hands, fingernails sinking into his flesh, drawing warm blood yet this pain is nothing compared to the agony before him, to the sundering of his own heart.

And then, the wails cease. Chan falls inert, a rush of air escaping his lungs as darkness oozes like ink from his lips, falls like tears from his eyes. His hands slip from Vernon’s grasp, settling limply upon his chest. Silence falls like a lid, trapping them there in the fading light; Joshua and Minghao’s song has died in a choked breath, Wonwoo’s bells quietened as he knelt at Vernon’s side. The shaman lays a hand upon Chan’s chest, looking for a beat, for a breath Vernon knows and his own lungs are burning, his own heart is stalling. He cannot detach his gaze from Chan’s pale face, from his closed eyes, his parted lips whence darkness springs.

There are cracks in the silence, where murmurs slither. The shadows Jeonghan had called rise from the muck swirling on the floor, gathering their tattered forms in smoky ribbons that twine around each of them, resting upon their shoulders, their hair, whispering obscure words into their ears. _It is done_ , they seem to be saying, _it is done it is here it is freed_. And there’s a glint upon the floor, candlelight reflected in the darkest metal, a liquid magma cold as the grave. They watch as it twists, as it pulls, as it tries to shape itself into the semblance of a being and Vernon feels bile rise in his throat at this grotesque display, the air thickening with the smell of rot, of decay.

He pulls Chan against his chest, away from the thing on the floor, the corruption. He does not want to think about how cold Chan is, how it seems all breath has left him. _It’s going to be fine_ , Jeonghan had said and Vernon believes him, he does, trusts each of them with everything he has yet Chan still isn’t breathing, yet his heart still isn’t beating, and the thing on the floor, the thing on the floor crawls and twitches and swallows the light, nourishing itself of the flames, fiery trails coursing over its obsidian shell like veins as it rises, twisting, at war with itself it seems and Vernon cannot tear his eyes away, arms crushing Chan against his chest.

“Give him back,” he says suddenly, words spewing out of his mouth like arrows, “give him back!” he yells as he rises to his knees, a desperate kind of anger burning fire on his skin. The thing twists like a snake, its body agitated by spasms, blisters of smoke and fire breaking on its skin as it rises still, curving a monstrous head towards the sound of Vernon’s voice, blind eyes of shining obsidian falling to him.

“I’m not scared of you!” Vernon yells anew as Wonwoo tugs him backwards, him and Chan, and they fall into each other upon the floor, Wonwoo tugging Chan to himself, hands flitting over his chest, his face, his hands.

“ _I’m_ scared,” Vernon hears Wonwoo whisper through clenched teeth and a crazed laugh escapes him as he scrambles back to his feet, standing between the twisting shadow and Chan’s inert form. He can see Joshua and Jeonghan behind it, shadows twisting over their clasped hands as Minghao scribbles runes upon the floor in white chalk. Something is preparing, and Vernon rises to his feet, keeping the shadow’s attention on himself, shielding Wonwoo and Chan on the floor.

“Give him back,” he repeats softly and the creature cocks its absurd head, its edges blurred and moving and Vernon doesn’t know where to look, his eyes jumping away from this vortex of swirling darkness, an icy fear curling against his spine yet he tightens his jaw, yet he forces himself to stare back, eyes dark, brows furrowed. And the creature snakes towards him, slowly, tentatively, gathering around itself the evanescent shreds of its being. A whorl extends from it, hovering near Vernon’s face and Vernon tries not to recoil as it touches the skin of his cheek, spilling ice into him. A ripple goes through the creature, who solidifies before Vernon’s eyes into an exact copy of himself, one made of obsidian, the candlelight refracting off its stony skin.

“I don’t have him,” the creature says in Vernon’s voice yet it sounds dead, a slightly wrong echo of the real thing and Vernon recoils, stumbling back into Wonwoo behind him and the creature smiles, something like a gash in its face.

“Then what–” Vernon stammers as Wonwoo pulls him back.

“You cannot banish me,” the creature says, turning to Joshua, to Jeonghan, to Minghao behind him. Jeonghan and Joshua are standing at the border of a circle filled in white chalk; yet as Vernon stares he understands it isn’t colored in – these are hundred of runes, scribbled one upon another by Minghao’s quick hand and he’s still writing as if in a trance, gaze lost, unblinking. Above him Joshua is murmuring under his breath, Jeonghan’s hands held tight in his own, Jeonghan’s who’s eyes have closed, who’s face has gone pale, almost obscured by the shadows swirling around him.

Yet Jeonghan’s eyes snap open at the creature’s voice and he stares it down, his face hardened, his gaze dark.

“You’re right,” Jeonghan says and there’s a thousand whispers threaded in his voice, “but they can,” he adds just as Minghao is screaming something unintelligible and the movement is almost too quick for Vernon to catch; he has withdrawn a penknife from his pocket, has driven the edge into his palm and the white runes turn red with his blood just as Jeonghan collapses against Joshua, who’s song has turned strident. All air leaves the room just to flood back in, all the shadows, all the power contained within the boundaries of the house narrowing on the single point where the creature stands, rushing through it, pulling at each scrape of its being until it gives, submerged in a wave of pure will.

The candles go out just as the electricity turns back on, bathing the shop in the soft glow of its yellow lights. And the shop is empty, empty besides themselves – Minghao, cradling its bloodied hand to his chest, Joshua holding up Jeonghan who’s face has regained some color, his wide eyes flitting around the room. Vernon abruptly turns towards Wonwoo who has knelt next to Chan, laid down on the floorboards.

“Is he–” he asks and he cannot continue; this is not a question he can put out there, as if the words themselves would make it real.

Wonwoo is about to answer when there’s a jolt, a loud intake of breath, and– and Chan springs up, hands flailing as if he had been falling, trying to grab something to hold on to and he finds the folds of Wonwoo’s robe, pulling him forward as Wonwoo grabs his wrists to steady him.

“Chan, look at me, it’s okay, do you hear me?” Wonwoo says softly, and Chan’s wild gaze alights on him, recognition settling in his face.

“I’m–” his voice cracks pitifully and Vernon kneels next to him, Chan letting go of Wonwoo to latch onto him instead, burying his face in the crook of his neck as Vernon’s arms close around him, gently, softly.

“How are you feeling?” Vernon asks into Chan’s hair and he feels Chan nod against him, his grip tightening on his waist.

“I’m okay,” he says, “I’m okay, I just, I don’t know where I was, and it was so cold, and also I think maybe I was dead? I don’t know? I don’t know what happened.”

“Was it painful?”

“No,” Chan says, “not until the end.”

He leans back slightly, looking up into Vernon’s face who feels his heart seize up, breath stuck in his lungs. All the fear Vernon had pushed down rushes up to claw at him, drowning his relief in abject horror at what could have been, at the daunting prospect that Chan could have been lost to him, destroyed beyond salvation, that no longer could he have held this body against him, felt this touch, heard this adored voice. Vernon feels the tears well up in his eyes as he crushes Chan back against his chest, his hold too tight he knows yet he cannot stop himself.

“You’re sort of smothering me,” Chan gasps against him but there is no reproach in his voice and his hands rest against Vernon’s back, fingers griping the fabric of his clothes.

“Never do anything like that ever again,” Vernon is saying past the knot in his throat.

“Wasn’t planning to. I think once was enough,” Chan says, and his voice sounds more assured, more like himself. “Magic’s cool when you guys do it but I’m really not feeling so hot right now. I think I’ll leave everything up to you professionals from now on. Like, next time you need someone to get possessed, you can count me out. This body will stay demon free–”

“Not a demon,” Vernon vaguely hears Jeonghan whisper under Chan’s ramblings and he cannot quell the smile that comes to his lips. Chan keeps speaking and Vernon knows it is for him only, for him to know he is here, he is fine, he is safe. Vernon listens to the sounds of the words without caring for their meaning, relaxing his hold on Chan, feeling his heart beat against his own, his breath fan over his skin. There’s movement to their right, Wonwoo moving towards Minghao and when Vernon spares a glance he is holding Minghao’s wounded hand in his, quelling the blood with the sleeve of his robes and Minghao’s smiling despite his obvious wince.

Besides them Joshua and Jeonghan have sat, leaning into each other, their stare slightly glazed over, an exhaustion Vernon has come to know well making a home on their features.

“Is it really gone?” Vernon tentatively asks them as Chan’s ramblings have dwindled, the weight of his head warm on his shoulder.

Jeonghan’s gaze snaps to him, a tired smile on his lips and he looks beyond Vernon to the back of the shop, to the darkest corners where his own shadows have crawled back. An uneasy ripple goes through them as they look at each other, Vernon tucking Chan further against himself. Something has been left behind, they know, just like their first calling upon Jihoon had in the library. The air is chilled, tainted, the memory of an uncanny darkness imprinted into the floorboards, into the stretching shadows of the shelves and the extinguished candles.

“It is for now,” Joshua is saying, “but this is not something that can be killed. Only banished.”

“For how long?”

Joshua shakes his head, looking down at his hands. Vernon looks at Jeonghan, Wonwoo, Minghao, finding there the same helplessness, the same uncertainty he had in Joshua’s simple gesture. There is no answer to be given and they fall silent, all of them, fear and doubt weighting heavy upon their minds. Every shadow seems threatening now, every noise elicits a jolt. Vernon sighs, closing his eyes yet there is no peace to find there either; it’s Chan’s pale face that he sees, his still breath and clammy hands. Chan who moves against him, warm and whole yet there is no telling which scars the shadow has left upon him, which new nightmare will haunt his nights.

“Vernon,” Chan says at the edge of his hearing and Vernon’s eyes snap open, finding his gaze yet Chan isn’t looking at him; he’s staring at the floor a few feet away, right by the bloodied chalk circle.

“What’s that?” Chan points, and all look towards the floor, towards the card there, the last one, the one they had forgotten.

It has turned over, during the struggle. A corner bent, chalk powder whitening its edges. They stare, and upon his tree, the hangman stares back.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading!!  
> Also thanks to Cix for releasing Jungle and giving me ideas for Jihoon's little trip. The aesthetics. The vibes. Thank you for my life sirs  
> Thanks to Dante for writing the Divine Comedy in the first place too and thus giving us Jungle hundreds of years down the line lmao
> 
> Also you can still find me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/BlanquetteAO3) where you can come kick my ass when I take too long to update


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